The Kitchen Garden Novice: Doing Time in Purgatory

When I was in college, the platitude became popular that "If you love something, let it go. If it comes back to you, it's yours; if it doesn't, then it was never really yours to begin with." Something sappy like that. The adage appeared for years on dormitory posters, bumper stickers, and novelty items. Having spent the better part of last week hosting a garage sale, I truly hope this philosophy doesn't come back to bite me in the butt.

"What are you selling on your garage sale?" an acquaintance asked me during a break.

"Oh just stuff," I replied. "You know, years of  'things' I've acquired because I couldn't live without them--and now I've realized, I can."

"Oh!  You're purging!" she exclaimed.

Purging. What a provocative word.  My mind wandered to bodily functions like prepping for a colonoscopy...sweating out a cheeseburger and fries on the treadmill. Purging, huh?

I entered the word "purging" into my go-to reference resource, Thesaurus.com. The list of synonyms generated was staggering--words like expel, exorcise, discard, disencumber--lots of "ex" and "dis" words. I discovered the word comes from the same root as "purify." Don't you just love word forensics? When I followed other words derived from the same root, my path lead directly to...purgatory.

Ah yes, Purgatory, that all-souls' waiting room for heaven. The concept of Purgatory, popularly attributed to the Roman Catholic Church, actually germinated centuries before in Judaism and ancient Greece. The philosophy developed that the deceased could not enter the hereafter without an atonement for their many worldly sins, a shackle to this worldly plane. Purgatory was the holding cell for those souls in need of a bit of a makeover. What a bunch of bologna!

And yet...hadn't I been embracing the same philosophy? I had spent weeks, preparing, clearing out the clutter, unlocking my shackle to "things," all in the attempt to simplify. At first it was hard to part with stuff. Each item placed on the sale tables left me feeling bereft, a bit like that scene in Cast Away where Tom Hanks watches Wilson float away with the waves. But then I started to notice an unexpected release. I turned downright ruthless in my selection of discards. As each piece of junk treasure left my garage last weekend, I felt one ounce lighter. I was floating toward enlightenment, one step closer to my true divinity. (Yeah, right.)

We cleared a garage full of clutter out in three short days, in exchange for three month's grocery cash. As tight as money has been this past year, the total earnings represented a tremendous cushion. Saturday as we closed the doors and kicked our feet up to relax we congratulated ourselves on our success. And then, we turned on the television. The screen filled with images from the tsunami ravaged villages of Japan. Stories of families with no earthly possessions but the clothes on their backs left us silent, pensive. The Universe was whispering to us.

"I want to help those people," I murmured. "It just makes me so ashamed that I'm hesitant out of fear for our own needs." 

"Maybe we can't send the entire bankroll," said hubby. "But I think we can at least send part of it."

And so we tithed the proceeds from our tag sale to The Red Cross for disaster relief to Japan. Hardly the widow's last mite, but it was a start.  Purgatory?  Oh yes, I've been spending time there. It's not such a bad place. There's room to grow there, and the door is always open. Now, if I can just keep from visiting my neighbors' garage sales and a prolonged stay in heaven's waiting room, all will be well.