Kangaroos and Other Thoughts on Garages

 If my garage were a kangaroo, it would be unable to jump. That's a ridiculous comparison since garages are stationary buildings, and no garage is ever known to have sprouted legs. And yet, when I first met my garage 48 years ago, I immediately regarded it as a sentient being. 

Ours is a detached brick two-story number with two bays and a separate windowed area downstairs with shelves for tools and stuff. The second floor's pitched roof generously allows anybody to stand tall, and its spacious dimensions are welcoming. The first thing anyone says when they see it is someone could live there. I was thirty when we moved in, and when I saw the wide-board pine plank flooring upstairs, I immediately pictured them gleamingly refinished one day. I was a homebody enthralled with the fiber arts and could easily imagine a future studio. From the start, the garage was a place of possibilities. A gracious host, it was as if it said,  You can turn this space into anything you want. 

I didn't know many things back then, and one gaping hole in my experience was Aristotle's observation called horror vacuui: space on our green earth will inevitably fill up with matter. If, in the early days, I gratefully considered my garage to be a someday spot, I also have to point out that when Jim and I drove off into the sunset after we got married, all of our belongings fit into the trunk of our car. That didn't last long.

Is anyone else old enough to remember the advent of garage sales? I'm a born vintage lover, and in the early '70s, folks were selling off all sorts of choice stuff for people like me with a penchant for antiques. I remember the thrill of finding warm-wooded wash stands and dressers, lamps from the thirties, burnished handled rakes, well-made wrenches, hammers, pliers, and other weathered tools that needed a little oiling. Our collection of trusty shovels hails from that era, and the best part of gathering all that booty was that the prices were so affordable. 

Funky rugs, linens, flatware, pottery - I became a collector who couldn't resist the era's amazing bargains. Curb findings were another temptation. Walk through my house, and I can tell you on what corner I found that enameled lamp and from which neighborhood I rescued that particular leather chair. 

Very naturally, over the years, newly acquired treasures relegated former finds into the corners of the garage. Kids grew and swapped rooms. Because life was so busy, childhood stuff would get boxed up and stashed to be gone through at another time.  My inspiring place of possibilities shifted roles, and so did my career. The place that inspired aspiration became a patient friend - a forbearing aunt. Box, haul, and stash; for nearly five decades, that's exactly what we did and still do. Filled corners tended to spill out into the center, and the accommodating aunt morphed into a cranky queen of congestion. 

Like most people, every once in a while, we clean our garage. I mainly get motivated when Jim threatens to rent one of those dumpster things and pitch everything. Once, when he went out of town, I dug in and made such serious headway that I could sweep the floor. Jim cried tears of gratitude; the kids came over, and we all exclaimed how marvelously empty it was and so squeaky clean. Ha!

While our kids can no doubt wax on about the clubhouse fun they enjoyed during their childhood years, as adults with kids and busy lives, they know this faithful, sturdy, receptive place. It’s not a kangaroo, but it is sentient and has a mind of its own. The four walls of our garage can talk, and my kids got the message regarding its central purpose. Try to walk around in our garage today. I dare you.

Our kids got the message