I go the the Exchange, the swap shop at the dump, almost every day now.

What else have I got to do?

Well, actually, you'd be surprised. I have have physical therapy 2 or 3 times a week, The Hub usually needs something picked up from somewhere, I'm trying to make some money on e-Bay, and therefore I need to keep close track of exactly what I'm spending on postage, packing tape, etc....

WAM is in a slow period - the whole mall, not just my booth, so I go up there and add something or take something away or re-do something every day too, and I almost always have something to ship at the post office. So there you go.

Somebody at PT asked me if I "felt funny" picking through stuff that other people are essentially throwing out. I don't, and and I said so. I come from a long line of people who, depending on how you look at it, were frugal, didn't like to see things go to waste, were into recycling, were poor, or were just plain trash pickers. I'd "feel funny" if I ripped somebody off, if I harmed or hurt somebody, lied or cheated. Taking something the original owners, and often even other scavengers, don't want and putting the effort into cleaning it up, repairing it, and turning it back into something not only useful, but in some cases, desirable, makes me feel sharp,lucky, and green-in-the-environmental sense.

Of course, there was a time when I was, or at least tried to be "into" brand new. It didn't work out for me. When I was trying, I thought it wasn't working out for me for one reason, but now I know that it's for another. (I'm going to explain all this - hang in there) It's about self acceptance, I think.

Here's the deal.

When I was kid we used to go and see my paternal grandmother about 3 times a year: at Christmas, Easter, and over the summer vacation. Gram was then and is now a very frugal person, a great lover of wildlife and the outdoors. She's headed towards 100 as a living testimony to all that simple living has to offer.

The house Gram lives in is across the road from a cemetary. I sometimes say, half kidding, that this is where I got my fatalistic attitude from, because it was the only place to go for a walk up there and going for a walk was all there was to do up there. So at an age when most children are very hazy on the concept of death, and many believe that children don't die, I was very clear on the idea that they did. I had stood at the markers of people born the same year I was, or even later. Their earthly remains lay under the my feet, and below that the snow, and below that the cold ground. The cemetary wasn't frightening. The ducks were there on the pond, and if, as in some movies Mom forgot I was awake for, the souls of dead children arose and roamed, they'd go down to keep the ducks company or play games around the statue of Jesus without having to worry that they'd accidentally knock one of his marble fingers off. My cousin did that, once.

Gram was big on walking too, and she walked all over the hills and woods all around her place, and over the cemetary. When I was little, Gram gave me two of the dolls that I loved the most. I named them Brenda and Martha. Brenda had a fabulously old fashioned look with pouty red lips and a hairstyle like a 1940's movie star. Her legs didn't work and she had a puncture wound through her soft body. So did Martha, who was more modern, and had a plastic body, and a very short and somewhat unattractive haircut by the time I got her, but she could stand on her feet. Gram gave me Brenda one year and Martha the next year.

They had punctures through their bodies because Gram had gotten them from the debris pile where the caretaker of the cemetary threw such things as silk flowers, plastic American flags, and whatnot. She told me this honestly and cheerfully. She said she couldn't stand to see them be thrown away, when they were still "good" and I was glad she had rescued them and given them new dresses. Brenda became the spirited but disabled girl of my stories, and Martha the somewhat plain one, nursing a secret hurt, who was tempted to do evil but was always convinced to do the right thing (Usually by my Beautiful Chrissy doll my parent's had given me for Christmas one year, and by which I was so overwhelmed with gratitude that I forgot to change her name)

That was great until I was about 9 and Gram gave me Christine. That was when the wheels really came off, so to speak. I guess I was getting a little more worldy wise , but I still maintain that Christine was a disaster. The problem with poor Christine wasn't her body but with her face. She would have done very well as one of those goth baby dolls artists sell on e-Bay these days, because her over-bright glass blue eyes shone relentlessly out of a face pitted and cracked all in spider web patterns. There was no way to repair this.She might have been equally scary looking without the weird lines criss-crossing her face, come to think of it. To make up for it, Gram had fitted her out in pale pink and lace pants and matching top with an elaborate headband in her carefully re-brushed ash colored hair. Unfortunately, all of this only served to make her look somehow more frightening. I, the little girl who skipped blithely through the cematary, had to munster up every ounce of guts that I had not to be scared of this doll....for which I was, mostly, ashamed.

After all, Christine couldn't help the way she looked. What was wrong with me that I could love Brenda and Martha, though they weren't perfect, and I wasn't perfect, but I couldn't accept Christine? Was I shallow? I tried harder. I tried every role in every story I could think of, but this was not going to work out. Thankfully, good manners had been instilled in me from the minute I could talk and I thanked Gram politely. But I always thought that everybody had the same ability to read body language as I do. I felt discouraged and like a moral failure, but I stuck that doll in the closet and closed the door.

And then I had another thought, an angry one, which I wouldn't even admit to myself again until years later. "For goodness sake, what does my family expect of me, anyway? These dolls come off of the graves of dead children, or maybe dead teenagers...dead SOMEBODY'S, that's why they have holes, for the stake that they stick in the ground next to the grave. And then they're too used up to even be good for somebody who isn't even here any more. They're trash. It's only after they're a dead person's trash that I can have them."

If I'd stayed angry, which I sort-of did, but only in some vauge way, it might have been better for me in the long run (though I imagine it would have been quite a scene there, if I'd said anything unpleasant in the short run) The trouble was, that I reached a conclusion that knocked the breath out of me at the time: my whole family knew all about the dolls and no one besides me thought there was anything wrong with it. That must be my place, then, below even people who didn't exist in this world any longer. I must be a girl worth even less than the trash in front of somebody's house, who must learn to be grateful for the trash by the side of the road. And they were right to think so, because a truly good girl would have embraced any doll I was lucky enough to get.

Besides lacking the vocabulary to get this thought across to anybody, I didn't even want to think it myself. I didn't want to ask if it was true. I didn't want to know. But on some level, I decided it about myself.

So there were years when I wouldn't shop at the Goodwill, and there were years that I bought expensive make up. There was one time when, having been told at the Estee Lauder counter by a haughty sales lady who was unimpressed with my habitual denim jacket "That mascara costs $15." I said, "Fine, I'll take two." There was a whole decade there, when I was married to my poor ex, when my whole self esteem was wrapped up in my beautiful professional clothes (bought at a 40% discount at the shop where I worked while I went to school), my carefully kept nails, clean modern lines of sharp modern furniture, matching dishes, nightgowns over-trimmed in lace.

Granted, it wasn't much of a materialistic period. It was such a paltry attempt at one, in fact, that nobody besides me ever noticed I was going through it. And of course, on some level I knew that new doesn't lead to self esteem. It leads to credit card debt.

I'm thinking the part of me that knew that all along was the person who loved the first two dolls.

So, now, stand with me, if you like, in the gray damp shed which is the Exchange. There are silk flowers and broken plates, weird plastic things that might contain electronic parts, a chair wihout a cushion, a stereo console from the 1960s some man in a dirty tee shirt is opening and closing the doors of thoughtfully.

I look down and see a doll at my feet. It looks a lot like Beautiful Chrissy, only not as tall, or as nice, but with the same bright expression and long pony tail coming out of a strange broken contraption on top of her head. She's wearing a filthy dress with a scotty dog on it. No shoes, and her face is dirty.

I can't stand it, I think, to see somebody's doll laying there like that. Even if the girl threw it away herself, in her memory that girl will exist and here is her doll all alone among the broken plates. I could take that home, I could maybe fix that up, make her a new dress....she could be a reborn doll. I could sell her on e-Bay...

Are you nuts? Don't pick that up! What's wrong with you? You don't know anything about doll restoration, you don't know how to sew, you'll waste time and make a mess, and nobody will want it.

But, I bend down and pick the doll up and as I do, I think of Gram. This must have been what she felt...a level of frustration, a wish to make what's broken whole, a wish to make something new. Through my 40 year old eyes, I now see the work that must have gone into those dolls before I got them. The bath in the sink and the drastic but needed haircut and the hand-made dresses - and in those days Gram wasn't just sitting around listening to the Pirates games on the radio - she had plenty to do. And there wasn't the internet, and since she never learned to drive there was no way to make a trip to town and no craft store there anyway for paint or polish.

She must have had the feeling though, as Brenda was snatched from the brink of disaster, that I would understand. As Martha was grabbed from the trash heap, maybe even at risk of falling down the hill, that it was bad enough that some young person died and never held her doll, or couldn't use it. No one can bring the dead back to life, no one can save youth, either their own or someone elses, but those of us who are alive and are wise can use what skills we have to make the most of each and everything that is before us. Gram wanted to create a smile out of greiving so that the grieving of a stranger might not be in vain.

Now I understand those things which I didn't then. And I remember too, that she didn't do this for my cousin, at least not as far as I know. Maybe she felt my cousin had all that she needed, but I don't think that was it. My cousin is an extrovert, a forward looking and practical woman who was a forward looking practical girl. I think Gram counted on me to understand and now, looking back, I feel honored.

I know that no one meant to say that I was worth less than the trash, more like the trash couldn't touch me. More like, because I was innocent I could see through the background and the imperfections. That I could see what was good, and thereby make a spot of goodness in the world. Who knows what happened with Christine? Maybe Gram felt under pressure, as if I then expected to recieve a doll, as if I'd be let down without one. Maybe she thought the marks would wash off, or that I could at least re-use the beautiful doll clothes she made. Where the spiritual meets the world there are bound to be misunderstandings.

So far Chrystina, the Exchange doll who has had her sink bath and haircut and gotten out of her horrible scottie dress is being fitted for a new costume and a new role. Her eyebrows are redrawn, her lips repainted, her lashes darkened - she looks great if I do say so myself. The plastic piece sticking out of her head has been re-made into a ribbon crown with crystals all around. Her dress is being hand sewn - I didn't even know I knew how to make pleats! A pair of dragonfly wings will rest on her back, she'll hold a scepter of reeds and sit on a lily pad throne. She'll be re-introduced to the world as Chrystina, Guardian Spirit of Lakes and Streams.....and I bet she'll wind up going home to someone a lot like me or my family.