Shopping
by Faith Shearin
My husband and I stood together in the new mall
which was clean and white and full of possibility.
We were poor so we liked to walk through the stores
since this was like walking through our dreams.
In one we admired coffee makers, blue pottery
bowls, toaster ovens as big as televisions. In another,…click for the poem in its entirety…
were in love but we liked wanting. Nothing
was ever as nice when we brought it home.
The objects in stores looked best in stores.
The stores were possible futures and, young
and poor, we went shopping. It was nice
then: we didn’t know we already had everything.“Shopping” by Faith Shearin, from The Owl Question. © Utah State University Press, 2002.
This is a particularly poignant poem, as we wait for our things to ship. In the three months it took for our possessions to arrive IN Scotland, we forgot so many of them, and did without them, that when they arrived, it felt, for a time, like a surfeit, like a forgotten holiday, where we sat, bewildered, in the midst of the spoils.
As I walk through the house, I am somewhat bemused by the number of things which, just a little while ago, weren’t mine. We have two couches and a loveseat now – one from Bean’s next door neighbor, one from Bean, and one from my friend K.zi, who is moving to Portland next month and found she and N. had too much furniture to properly stage their house for sale. The couch cover was my sister’s, the tables came from my mother’s attic, a stop on the way from someone other kitchen nook; the dishes which rest on the papered shelves – the white ceramic set, the brown and blue pottery set, the two crystal sets, not to mention the platters and the tea things — all of them are things which only weeks ago were on their way out of other doors, bound for consignment and thrift store shelves.
The fridge. The chairs. The nests of baskets in the pantry, awaiting warm rolls, fresh fruit, and towels. Everything came from someone else, someone who was reaching out and welcoming us home.
Which is why it makes me feel so bad that I got a letter from a friend in Scotland this morning, and sat down and cried.