Apologies for the double send, this post was mistakenly paywalled. Go forth and be free!
Three years ago I wrote about letting a dream of mine die. I never dreamed of not dreaming that dream anymore, but suddenly it happened. I stopped looking for signs it was meant to be and when you stop looking for signs? Turns out you stop seeing them. I accepted that just because I had wanted that dream for so long didn’t mean I needed to keep wanting it. And if that dream was dead, then it was time to release the physical things associated with that dream back out into the world.
I’ve spent more than a year looking for a buyer for this collection of mine. It’s not that these items are actually precious, although they feel precious to me. And it’s not that I have a hard time getting rid of things, I finally broke through that lifelong barrier when we sold our family home and I did the most traumatic downsizing of my life. It’s just that I wanted this stuff to go to the right people, the ones who would appreciate all this stuff that I had spent so much time and effort sourcing. I’m so thrilled that that is about to happen.
I’ve spent every morning of the past week or so looking for, sorting, and assembling the vintage nautical, seascape, books, artwork, textiles, dishes, lamps, and indeed much more that I had scattered around in various places.
Tomorrow morning I’ll be getting up early to load up my car and drive to this perfect dream of a shop in Kennebunkport, Maine. Then I’ll turn right back around and drive back to Vermont. I’m not focused on the money, although it’s nice to not be giving this collection away for free. But anyone who collects or attempts to sell vintage knows that it’s actually hard to do, or at least to break even doing it.
What I’ll focus on instead is how all this stuff that’s been in boxes and storage will find its way into people’s homes and cottages, in the exact state where my dream had been focused for so long. It makes me happy just thinking about it. I know these discoveries are going to make a lot of likeminded people happy. How cool is that?
Collecting these items over the past fifteen or so years has been one of the most fun projects of my life. I also eventually understood that it had acted as an enjoyable distraction from the parts of my life that weren’t working or didn’t feel fulfilling. Looking and digging and negotiating then hauling everything back (and, ahem, hoarding it) brought me such intense joy*. That’s what I’m focused on now, not the dead dream but the thrill of the hunt, the process. And now: the sharing, the reallocation of it all.
Can you believe it’s summer? I cannot. For all the whining I did about winter—and it was a lot—I feel the most shocked I’ve ever felt about summer being so fully here. Everything is so green. The humidity is so very, very humid. The cover is off the Divorce Town pool, the girls are already tanning, and baby it is cold-beer-while-sweating-in-the-sun season.
For someone so ocean-focused, I haven’t had a New England beach vacation for years now, there’s just been so much life going on, so many transitions to manage. But I’ll be returning to Maine this summer. I can’t wait. I wouldn’t be surprised if I didn’t end up doing a tiny bit of flea marketing while I’m there, because old habits die hard. But this time I’ll be doing it just for myself, for right now, not for some amorphous future, some imagined better life.
We might be living in Hell but in between the licking flames I hope you slice up a whole watermelon, sprinkle a little sea salt on some sliced cukes, dip your painted toes in a chlorinated-as-hell pool, put your body into the Atlantic, eat some corn on the cob, get a tiny sunburn, and let your freckles bloom. I hope you (and I) get to have the kind of summer moments, even if they’re fleeting, that felt like those summers when we were kids and teenagers, when summer felt endless and free and our bodies were tired from so much sun and swimming and playing. Laziness. Heat. Potential.
Happy summer, everyone. We made it!
*If you’re rich and want me to do some vintage interiors sourcing for you, let’s talk. That is still a quite active dream of mine.
**I’m not selling everything pictured here. I’m keeping the best of the best, the items that mean the most to me, because I’m not completely insane.
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I love this phrasing of focusing on “the thrill of the hunt, the process” followed by “the reallocation, the sharing”.
What a world we could exist in, if we all found a way to embrace the use of our skills with this kind of mindset.