Jenny

March 23, 2019

Auctions are bittersweet affairs. Total strangers pawing through the remnants of someone’s life looking for bargains amongst things that were once treasured. We passed by Jenny’s house on the way back home from a pancake breakfast in Forestville. One of Sinclairville’s more colorful citizens, Jenny had lived across the road from my son in what had once been the corner store. Over the years, she and her sister had operated a chocolate-making business, a bridal and flower shop, beauty parlor, ceramics business, and general store. Their parents had bought the place decades ago, and when they had both died, Jenny and her sister Babe ran the operation. I’d only been inside a few times in more than thirty years, the first being when their father died and they held the funeral in the house.

Slowly over the course of the years, the businesses slowed till they simply shut down. Babe died some twenty years ago, and Jenny lived there by herself till recently when it was necessary for her to go to a home for care. There is a niece, but no other living relatives as far as I know. 

Jenny was pretty crusty. I like to think of her as ‘local color.’ She once called the authorities on our son when he had a campfire in his backyard, so he moved it further back on his 12 acres. Nate was determined to turn her into a friend, and he, his wife Deb, and their girls would call on Jen, taking soup and other treats when she was sick. Gradually over the years, Jenny warmed to them, welcoming them into her home, having coffee with Nate, receiving the girls, offering to give them different items. One Easter, Nate took her an Easter basket of canned goods, including a ham. As Jenny pulled it out of the bag, she exclaimed, “A ham! You brought me a ham? The only Jew in Sinclairville, and you brought me a ham?”

Nate wheeled around to grab the pan on the stove and replied with a similarly loud voice, “Jenny, you’re frying bacon, and you want to complain about a ham?” They had a good laugh, and Jenny remained a good friend. But today, most of her life was on display, auctioned off to a crowd of people, most of whom we’d never seen before. It’s sad, really. I would guess Jenny to be in her eighties; more than half of which was spent in that huge house with endless rooms and basement containing thousands of ceramic molds, a couple kilns, assorted equipment for the clay and the chocolate. I watched bridal gowns that had hung on the racks for years being carted off, treasures bought at a bargain. Life sold to the highest bidders. 

Jesus told us to not store up treasures on earth where moth and rust corrupt and thieves break in and steal, but to lay up treasures in heaven where nothing on earth can diminish them. Most of us at one time or another fall prey to the lure of this world’s stuff, but someday, all the things we value here we will leave behind, hopefully to family, but quite possibly to strangers who will see those same items not as connections to our past, but merely as things to resell or use for a life quite different than ours. I am thankful tonight for Jenny...crusty old Jenny, who gave to this community for years, and who leaves behind not just her stuff, but a legacy for me, my son and daughter in law, and their girls who learned from their dad how to be a friend to someone who may seem difficult on the outside, but whose heart beats for companionship and love just like their own. 

Before going home, Nate asked me to help him with something. He had bought the kitchen table where he and Jenny had shared cups of coffee over the years. It turns out Jenny had given something to Nate too. No, not the table; he bought that. But it was more than a table. We carried to his home memories, treasures Jenny gave that can never be taken away.