The Basket Lady

Basket Lady has been spring cleaning in bits and pieces. Getting rid of old dusty papers stashed in a box out of sight in the attic-saving them for a rainy day, I suppose. Dear Sue Ellen calls it purging-the letting go of “old stuff.”

When does “stuff” tip the balance and become clutter? Things that I don’t need or want anymore, but can’t get rid of just yet. Things that I might use someday or one can never have too many (fill in the blank).

When do thoughts tip the balance and become clutter? We’ve always done it this way! I couldn’t live without (fill in the blank) in my life! If I could just fix this one thing about myself, life would be perfect. Truth is, one of the amazing mysteries of life is how cleaning up physical clutter clears the mind. Clearing out the old opens us to new possibilities.

As I looked through umpteen boxes, I found some old baseball cards but no rookie cards of Mickey Mantle or Ted Williams. I began to recall the time my aunt Mary Jo let a fortune slip through her hands kind of like a Bill Buckner baseball.

When my aunt Mary Jo was a teenager, my Grandfather Burdette gave her a limited black and white rookie baseball card of Mickey Mantle. She wasn’t a baseball fan; she was a Frankie Avalon fan.

The cards looked plain and worthless to her, so she put the card in an old cigar box with dozens of other baseball cards and gave them to a 12-year -old boy who promptly stuck the baseball cards including Mickey’s rookie card in between the spokes of his bicycle tires and proudly pedaled the bike down the street flapping away a small fortune.

In the Greenville-Piedmont News years later, a feature article about a local man that my aunt May Jo knew sold his Mickey Mantle rookie card at auction for $200,000.

She fainted dead away and my uncle Don went out to the front porch and yelled across the street for the paramedics to come over to the house 'cause Mary was having a bad spell.’ The paramedics revived her with ammonia salts. After all these years, my aunt Mary Jo regrets giving those baseball cards away and still dreams about “all the money she could’ve had.”

Robert Frost said it best, ‘In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on. Isn’t that the truth, friends?

No matter what happens, fortune or ill, life goes on. How do you choose to go on? What driving force or purpose sets your daily life into motion? Choose life. Have a kind, vibrant, bountiful, and fun-filled month of April.

Shine your kindness on every one. Let’s adopt a kindness week here, in the River Valley. After all, kindness not only counts but it adds up!

We miss you every day, Dot Sanchas! Until then, smile and live in the present.