My neighbor died. There was an estate sale the next week, items unwanted by the family heirs who’d picked the place over already. Mostly old things of little value – my neighbor had been old and her things were old, but ordinary. In the kitchen, amid other brics and bracs, a coffee mug sat alone on a shelf, the word “Grandma” on its side. That item was tagged five cents, and no one had bought it. Or even picked it up, I think, to see how weighty, how fraught it might feel in their … [Read more...]