Little mysteries...

We spent much of the weekend cleaning the garage. This may not sound like a great time, but it was actually quite enjoyable.There is satisfaction in creating order, and we always like working together, too.

 Our garage is big, wide enough to hold two cars, and extra deep. This is both a blessing and a curse, because as Aristotle once postulated, "horror vacui," or "nature abhors a vacuum." The garage collects stuff it is lovely, open, space.

To be fair, we use it for very good reasons. There is a big freezer there full of chicken and lamb raised here. The snow blower and lawn mower take up lots of space. There are ladders and tools, garden implements, flower pots, seasonal decorations in bins.  And then all the animal care stuff. Pallets are stacked with hay and straw. A tower of neatly bagged shavings stands ready for animal house cleaning day. There are barrels filled with food for chickens, goats and wild birds.  Trash goes there until we haul it to the transfer station, and bins of recycling get messy.  Its a lot of stuff. 

The weekend was not too hot and the sky was overcast .It was good weather for hauling and moving, discarding and organizing.There was sweeping up endless barrows of wasted hay and hauling it off. I swept cobwebs and polished windows. When we had a pretty good sized dent made, and lots of floor showing, it gave me delight to put my sweet gate leg table under the sign from my fathers business. Below it we hung a lovely little row of hooks I was recently gifted. This perfectly holds a variety of scoops I use for feed and seed and such. To the right of that Chris fastened another vintage board with metal hooks to the wall for me..  I carefully hung each donkeys halter and lead rope there. The tidiness of it all brought me joy.

At one point on Sunday, when I was alone in the garage, a distinct whiff of Half and Half pipe tobacco wafted around me. This was my dads tobacco, and part of his warm, familiar, scent. After he died, I would often feel I could smell it. The first time was when I was watching my grade school daughter raise the American flag at her school with some other pint sized kids. Other times I'd be zipping down the highway, and the car would fill with the familiar aroma. It was comforting, yet odd.  It's been years since it's happened, but puttering happily in our good garage, there was that dad reminder, tantalizing.

Last week my chum since third grade posted an image on Facebook that captured my interest in a big way. She had been searching for memorabilia from Topsfield, Massachusetts, on Ebay. And came up with this:

It doesn't show well in the picture, but the ink is a deep green. My father used to type all his business letters in green ink. He used all capital letters, and invented abbreviations that could be real head scratchers. That green was his signature color.  I was delighted when Melanie shared this little treasure, and fired it off to Chris, who quickly bought it for me. I'm not sure what I will do with it, but I'm delighted to have it. It does make me wonder, though, who would have saved this old book of matches, and why?

Another little life mystery, I suppose. Like why empty space is quickly filled, how certain emotion evoking scents appear from nowhere, and how little reminders of the past suddenly pop up to offer delight.