Treasures

I haven't been an avid yard-saler since my North Carolina days, but some friends were heading to the Association of American and Canadian Expatriates yard sale, and I tagged along.  Actually the story is more complicated than that.  Our yard sale expedition was nearly cancelled due to rat poison.  But after some tense moments and medical consultation, we headed off, prepared with a wad of shekels and a GPS. 

Listening to the  GPS narrator mispronounce Hebrew and Arabic street names would be quite entertaining, if we weren't straining so hard to read street signs, anticipate lane changes, and recognize landmarks among the buildings made of uniform local stone.  As my friend and I were heading into the city to retrieve a lost cell phone from a helpful stranger, I asked the lady to describe her apartment building.  She said, "What can I say?  They all look the same."  Even GPS didn't help because we were spelling the street name Betsal'el instead of Bezalel. 

Anyway, back to the yard sale: it was in an open courtyard deep in the Jewish area of West Jerusalem, and people milled about just as at any other yard sale, except with more headscarves and hats.  I was on the lookout for Christmas gifts, some wardrobe variety, and shoes.  My Ecco shoes have been disintegrating faster than I can duct tape the soles back together.  I didn't find any shoes that fit, and I have no comment at this time about the Christmas gifts, but I had a great time looking at merchandise and hearing English mingled with Hebrew, Russian, and Brooklyn.

 At one table full of beautiful greeting cards, I saw a what I thought was a magnified photograph of a snowflake, but as I looked closer, I could see it was lace.  I stopped to talk to Ruth Guthrie and her husband, and she told me the story of the lace. 

"This lace belonged to my great-grandmother, and she wore it over a black shirt.  She always dressed like she was rich.  She came from Bosnia-Herzogovina, my grandmother brought the lace with her, not the first time she came to Israel (1954), but much later.  I kept begging her for it, but she said, 'Not for little girls.'  But when I got older, she gave me some of her laces little by little.  She loved me, and she was very good to me."  I asked Ruthi if she had written down her grandmother's story, and she said she hadn't yet.  But she has been telling them to her children and grandchildren. 

At another table I saw a beautiful silver plate not unlike the one above.  The Hebrew letters identify this as a Matzah plate for a passover meal.  I asked the lady behind the table if there was a story behind this plate.  She turned to the man next to her and said, "Is there a story behind this plate?"  

The man said, "Of course there's a story behind this plate.  The children of Israel were in Egypt, and they were in bondage and having a terrible time...."