Mama’s spaghetti bowl. It was hard for me to part with my mother’s things, and this was the final object I’d included in her estate sale. You can’t keep everything, Elizabeth, I chided myself.
The morning of the sale, a stranger claimed that periwinkle bowl. “Mama always wanted to be a stewardess,” I told her. “But airplanes were new in 1939, and you had to be an RN to become a stewardess. So Mama took care of that—she went to nursing school!”
“Oh, I love hearing this!” the woman said.
“Mama was 98 years old when she passed away. She lived independently in her own home until a stroke took her to heaven,” I continued. I mentioned how my mother’s hands had been featured in a TV commercial for a local hospital, then talked about the Sunday dinners during which we used the bowl. As I talked, I found myself smiling.
For the rest of the sale, I not only sold items but also shared stories about my mother. I wasn’t getting rid of Mama’s things—I was spreading her legacy.
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