Second HandsWhy bringing home used items holds special appeal for me.
My husband and I love other people’s things. We are both collectors of interesting artifacts, unearthed from junk stores and yard sales, and much of what we own once belonged to someone else, maybe even several someone elses.
Our first purchase as a couple was a cherrywood drop-leaf table. We bought the table from an antiques store despite its wobbly legs, inflated price and that it barely fit in our 600-square-foot home. It was just what we wanted. We could open one leaf and share a corner while we ate dinner, then fold it away to make room to walk by. Even though we’ve upgraded to a whole 1,000 square feet, have room to fold out both leaves and seat 10 around the table--ideally good friends--when it’s just the two of us, we still eat dinner at one corner, which is more conducive to good conversation.
Among our most treasured possessions is a considerable library of books. Many have been picked up at our favorite downtown thrift shops or at the Goodwill store around the corner from our house. We have a first edition of L. Frank Baum’s The Road to Oz that’s practically worthless because of its broken spine, tattered and missing pages, and illustrations that had been colored in with wax crayon, but the story is as wonderful as ever. Once, on a visit to Conwy in North Wales we stumbled upon a church hall book sale. Among the musty boxes of paperback romances and tattered children’s books, we found an illustrated copy of All the Mowgli Stories and, strangely enough, a small leather-bound guide to shopping for junk.
For Christmas last year, my husband gave me both volumes of Julia Child’s The Art of French Cooking. The white Fleur de Lys branding the cover were pristine and unblemished. There were no turned-down corners or splashes of béarnaise sauce or oeufs en gelée on the pages. The book’s previous owner, or owners, had taken especially good care of it. At the request of my husband and mother, I made foie de veau sauté--calves livers in brown sauce with onions. I put the butter in the pan as directed, hearing Julia’s voice in my head and seeing her scrape off a giant slab of butter that the recipe would claim to be a tablespoon. I added the onion and in true Julia style, spattered my beautiful new book with onion-scented fat. I was mortified. How could I be so careless as to ruin such a beautiful gift?
“It’s a cookbook,” said my husband with his usual level of pragmatism. “It’s supposed to get dirty.”
“But it was so perfect.”
“That’s because it’s never been used,” he said. “Whoever owns it next will know that you loved me enough to cook me liver.”
It was true. It takes a certain dedication to deal with offal for the benefit of a loved one. I wondered why the books were in such good condition. Were they a wedding gift that was never used, or had they been purchased by a hopeful husband with a curiosity for Ris de Veau à la Crème? Whatever the reason, the original owner hadn’t appreciated them as much as I now did.
An air of mystery hovers over many of our treasures. Are our four pen and ink drawings of San Pedro signed by the Lionel Barrymore, or another Lionel Barrymore altogether? Do the embroidered initials, W.A. on the blue silk smoking jacket I found on eBay indicate the original owner or was the jacket just permanently borrowed from the Waldorf Astoria? We could do the research and find out, but an attractive pedigree wouldn’t make these things more valuable to us. We don’t buy these things in the hopes of turning up a rare and valuable antique; we buy them because we like them and they suit us.
My husband and I came to each other second hand. Neither of us are the bright, shiny, young things we were in our first marriages. Our previous owners have left us bruised, slightly weathered, and in far-from-perfect condition. Although neither of us could be considered a sound financial investment, we suit each other’s tastes and fit perfectly into the space available. We appreciate one another just as we are, and that gets us foie de veau sauté at a rickety table for two.
