Liz

Damon hated shopping for Christmas, and he especially hated shopping during Christmas vacation. Somehow, regardless, we ended up in a store for one reason or another and he would go into a rant about endless consumerism and lack of humanity while the family browsed. Somehow shopping at thrift stores evaded the moral degradation of other venues. ### “We have to make things, “he insisted. “What does it mean if you just bought a thing? That you thought of a person for the few seconds that you had the correct amount of money in your pocket or your credit card to appease the urge?”### The reason we ended up at the thrift store, on Christmas Eve, was due to his suggestion of a scavenger hunt. Each person had to collect: a Head, two feet, two hands, a torso, legs and hair. Andy ran outside immediately and returned with an oak ball and some pinecones. Mom offered up some basic sewing notions: thread, pins, hem tape, a thimble. Lilly ransacked the kitchen to proffer bamboo skewers. Aside from some glue and paper, the lack of materials on the premises forced the hunt further.### In Sallie’s Attic we found a Pocahontas doll, a wooden Pinocchio, a pregnant visible woman, and a Barbie. Once home, we spread our treasures on the table for dissection. The visible woman, we decided, was too difficult to split up as she only had the one vertical seam and, unless you wanted to use the fetus as a head, she had no usable parts. She stood as an educational device and inspiration at the center of the table. Erin draped a blue napkin over her head and dubbed her Mary.### We had to use the serrated knife and cutting board to free Barbie’s hands. Pocahontas was held together by easily popped ball and socket joints. Pinocchio’s glue was ancient. We spent the evening recomposing the elements into figures and decorating them. Dad read the same stories aloud he reads every year. But instead of rolling our eyes when he teared up at the same spot, we were busy attaching heads and feet, hands and hair. We wrapped them up and wrote our exchanged names on them.### I got Lilly’s doll, with the Pocahontas shirt, Pinocchio’s shoes, and the oak ball head. But when she moved to Peru with the man she married, without inviting us to the wedding, I found I just couldn’t hold onto junk any more.