By Megan Orringer
My favorite antique store sits in a good town, you probably know it: with a bookshop and a tea shop and an okay place to get pizza, another spot to get pancakes. In the summer, there’s a nice walking path and better than decent ice cream. The location of this shop, close to all the other perks, is critical to our going there as a family. There was exactly one time when our children were persuaded that antiquing for the sake of antiquing might be a good activity for them, and then never, ever again. So it’s the one near the pancake house or bust.
A visit to the antique store can cause a person to think a lot about luck. It can feel like luck if our schedule allows the visit, if the traffic on the way up is merciful and, of course, there is luck in the shop’s inventory. The store lacks a robust online presence, so I never know what will be there, which makes me want to go all the more. I would go every weekend, if only to increase my chances of finding.
The shop is right-sized, and not too dusty or cluttered. I won’t tell you its name; I’m too polite and fear maligning the neighbors, though I’m sure they already know. My favorite antique shop is bookended by similar stores. The signage isn’t great. On your first visit, it is likely you would, like me, inadvertently go into the wrong store first. You’ll wander all the way through a much larger, less-well-edited shop and think, can this really be the place I was trying to go?
There is a real high in realizing you are wrong, that the better one is still to come. I still go to the two wrong places on every visit. I’ve found it does no good to look for a specific item that you believe you need; you have to just lean in to what is there. You might be on the lookout for art or furniture or flatware, but you don’t get to choose! You put yourself out there and let the lucky item choose you.
Closer to our home, an auction house runs a pick-up site for their estate sales. The kids don’t have to be persuaded to join. I do all of the heavy lifting alone online. The kids will come along willingly to pick-up because they know that something will actually happen, that we have already won.
Like at the antique shop, I have so far exclusively purchased things we could certainly live without: a vintage croquet set, a low dresser. The last time I went for a pick-up, it was just me and my son. We had won three used suitcases for practically nothing while really trying to win a painting.
I’d lost bidding for the painting. Our mood was low. Unlucky. Did I even want these suitcases? We joined the line of winners that snaked through the site. The painting I’d lost was set up at the front and it seemed larger and more vivid in person. My heart sank. The suitcases that were now my suitcases looked dusty. As I loaded them into the back of our SUV, I noticed the pockets. Surely they had been emptied. I unzipped just one. In it, I found a silk floral Ferragamo scarf, waiting just for me.
My mother was very good at buying antiques. We had next to no money, but she was able to pull the most beautiful chests and tables and set them up in our home. Antiques were important to our identity as a family, like politeness and doing well in school. I can still hear the sharp intake of breath before my mother agreed to the price of a mirrored sideboard. It was sport and an art and a meditation, her way of antiquing. I am still trying to recreate that.
