Hi Everybody,
We go to sleep early New Years Eve because we’re exhausted. It’s a desert-cold night and my husband and I are grateful for heat and our comfy hotel room bed. We are somewhere in Phoenix. There is a riotous party ratcheting up, downstairs. The pumping, thumping music lulls us into REM sleep. Well until the stroke of midnight, that is, when exuberant screams of revelers blast through the walls and fireworks, yes fireworks, go ka-boom.
We are in Arizona to hook up with the rest of my mystery family whom I discovered recently, thanks to Google and Facebook. We met many of them last summer in Indianapolis. (See my series of blogs, “Marvelous Midwest). But a few were still missing-links. Hence a “family reunion” was arranged in Phoenix. Cousins fly in from parts east, west, north and we gather for one joyously chaotic family graze-a-thon after another in the house of the matriarch herself, the stalwart and handsome woman who was married to my great uncle Sidney.
Cousins and spouses and kids perform, compose and record music, teach, write, draw, sew, cook, invent, travel, save lives in a neo-natal ICU, tile floors and do dry wall, run a business (Chopsaver), build and repair musical instruments. I know I’m leaving stuff out. Perhaps we are a bunch of high achievers, you think?
Well I like to work AND play. Play for me is shopping for clothes. Actually, shopping is my cheap therapy. “Therapy” because it gets me out of my head and out of the house. “Cheap” because I’m a Goodwill Thrift Store kind of gal. So when my cousin Noelle tells me there is a consignment store a block away and “let’s walk over,” well I can barely breathe.
So on the second to the last day of 2012, we are standing in front of “A Second Look.” Someone opens the door and I swear it’s like walking across a threshold into a phantasmic, colossal, colorful circus of joy. It’s big, like Ross Dress for Less, but the clothes (and jewelry and knick-knacks, shoes, bags, rugs, gifts, men’s wear) are unique and quality stuff. Apparently there are a lot of ladies in the desert who are happy to unload their spiffy frocks and do-dads.
And now I’m gasping for air. The stuff is SO fine that it turns over quickly. If a garment stays on the rack longer than a month the price goes down. Two months, the price goes WAY down. That is how I snag a pair of gray jeans for a whopping 75% off. They cost me $4.49. We stay all afternoon. Until the lady tells us on the loudspeaker to check out because the store is closing. The next day we go back for more.
I think shopping, for some people is, well, more than shopping. It’s a communal experience. It’s a feeling of belonging. And escaping. Even though we are in our own little worlds, searching for the right blouse or taking delight in running our hands over a row of coats, every customer in the store is doing the same thing. Looking, touching, trying on. Being utterly human.
In the dressing room we emerge from our curtained cubicles long enough to “ooh” and “aah” each others’ outfits. I learn the dance quickly. You can take up to 8 garments in at a time and afterwards when you return the booty to the attendant, you report how many are “yes” and how many are “no.” By now, she is carefully arranging my growing collection of “yes’s” on a nearby rack.
Exhausted but thoroughly exhilarated we finally drag ourselves and our stuff to the cash register lady, a lovely woman who knows this store, knows her clientele, knows the neighborhood and knows enough to ask me if I’d like to sign up for their rewards program.
“Awwwwww, I don’t live around here. Why don’t you open a store Los Angeles…? (I’m making pathetic groans at this point) Please! Please! Please!” She skillfully redirects my pleas for franchising. “So you’re visiting,” she responds. “Do you know anyone in Phoenix who’s on our program?” I mention my cousin (who is ripping out floor tiles in her house as I speak) and the woman’s face lights up like sunshine. “Oh yes we know her. We’ll add your reward points to her account.” That’s good for $25 off her next purchase.
Later that evening when I tell my cousin all about it, her smile is as big as the saleswoman’s and she tells me a little more about her connection with the store:
It was once upon a time… When she found her soul mate, a man who matched her intellect and curiosity and utter zest for grabbing the guts of life. He really loved her. And she loved him. The marriage gave my cousin, this monumentally talented and driven woman, a sense of balance and calm. But it ended tragically when he passed away suddenly. They had less than a decade together. My cousin tells me that she went to “A Second Look” everyday after that. It was her therapy. Being in the store with the clothes, with the people, helped bring her back to life. One day she told the saleswoman about her husband. “You’re not the only one,” the woman confided. The store is a haven. It reminds us that we can go on, even when we don’t think we can. Or don’t want to.
So what else can we do for each other, and ourselves, but bear witness to sorrow and suffering. Then get busy doing. Doing something. Get out of the house, out of our head and into the land of the living. It’s a new year…
Mickey Donahoe
As always your blog resonates with me. I too adore shopping and see it as therapy. And I do all my shopping at thrift stores too. Can’t afford and/or can’t see spending for overpriced new stuff, when you can get great name brands for far far less. So loved this blog!!
Cali Rose
Oh yeah! We’re thrift store mamas. I hope can can make it to A Second Look in Phoenix someday. It’s therapy and classy bargains, all at the same time. Thanks Mickey!
Ginny Stone
Hi Cali!
You have me itching to get to Phoenix. “By the time I get to Phoenix they’ll have a new sale. And I’l find the stuff I Really need to by. And maybe Norm can gather up some good books – Tha-at he has never read before. By the time I get to Phoenix I’ll be itchin’, to get my hands on Everything. There’s nothing like a thrift store to excite me. and I’ve been excited many times before – before – but just once more don’t close the door.
Well, I didint put uke to it, but with a little messing around, I think it will fit, eh.
Here’s too a great joyful adventerous new year!
Sincerely,
Ginny
Cali Rose
You found a song in all this! I don’t recall seeing a sales rack at A Second Look. But everything is so incredibly reasonably priced. The bonus is to find something you really like and discover that it’s been marked down 75% because it’s been hanging around for two months. That’s like eating chocolate, let me tell you…