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母亲去世后，我开始爱上了逛旧货市场。我喜欢在听过的CD、穿过的牛仔裤、围过的丝巾中探寻它们主人曾经的故事，似乎这么一来，这些物品以前见证过的欢笑或是感动就能得以延续…… I like to think that a bit of her laughter, sense of wonder and fun travels with them and that any tears or sadness are long since washed away. I moved from Chicago to Brooklyn in July of 2004, just in time to watch my mother die. That wasn't why I moved back. She was supposed to be getting better; the chemo was working. I came because I'd rented an apartment with Jay, this cute guy I'd started dating, who was originally from New York too. But a week after pulling up in a U-Haul, I found myself cleaning out my childhood home with my siblings. Our parents were both gone now; anything that we couldn't take with us had to fit in a 20-cubic-yard Dumpster. I could barely squeeze the little I saved into the one-bedroom Jay and I shared. I didn't even try to unpack the boxes of my parents' books, the bags of my mom's dresses. Jay (who held me up at the funeral and painted our place all my favorite colors and quickly proved to be much more than just a cute guy) had to shimmy sideways to get between my father's easy chair and my mother's broken desk. I was claustrophobic from the mountains of photos and misplaced knickknacks, and yet I found myself drawn to someone else's castoffs. We hadn't lived there more than a month and already I was claustrophobic from the mountains of photos and misplaced knickknacks. So it made no sense when, out walking one Saturday later that summer, something caught my eye — a pale green scrap of fabric — and suddenly I was steering Jay toward someone else's castoffs. My first stoop sale. | 
