I tagged along recently as my wife visited the neighborhood yard sales. She was hunting toys for the visits of the grandkids since they have outgrown the present batch, or their charm has faded.

A friend of mine haunts yard sales, partly hunting bargains, but mostly I think because he gets to meet a couple dozen new people each weekend. He collects acquaintances the way others collect bric-a-brac. And sure enough, we bumped into him halfway through our rounds.

Where others see camaraderie, bargains or commerce, I’m inclined to see mutability. Yard sales are about time. Estate sales even more obviously. Some people are moving. Some are no longer with us. Some are just cleaning out the debris time has caused to accrete like silt in attic or basement.

On display are fashions now out of date, clothes outgrown, technology outmoded, lives outworn. At the home of one young lad who resembled Tom Sawyer, he demonstrated toys he no longer loves – guns that fire water, armored vehicles that fire nerf balls, a beeping, flashing gizmo whose purpose was opaque to me but that, presumably, had once fascinated him. Now he has new thrills in view, found something new.

Odd how often the must-have toys quickly pall, while makeshift aids to imagination endure. The backyard fort or tree house can be the stage for a thousand dramas long after the toy of the moment has lost its luster. I probably date myself, but I recall a lot of fun was to be had by things as simple as a box from a large appliance or a barrel, long after the Zorro costume or six shooters got old.

A friend of the family, hearing the toy hunt was afoot, contributed a bunch or beat-up, once loved matchbox cars from his youth to the grandkid toy chest. I warned him that he might get nostalgic someday soon and wish he had them back. He thought not. We’ll see.

At one melancholy stop, a man was selling out and moving to an easier to navigate one story place. He told me his wife had died several years before and his kids worried about him tumbling down the stairs when going to be or rising from it. But after thirty or more years, you could tell he was reluctant to leave the family home.

Among the items he had on sale were lots of holiday trinkets and decorations, Christmas pictures and Halloween place mats with woven images of witches and black cats. Apparently the sensible, grown-up kids had no sentiment to spare for the artifacts of their childhood. “Everything must go” is not just the motto of every sale but of every life.

God knows we all stack up more stuff than we need, and eventually wonder what possessed us to buy it. We surely don’t need any more. Perhaps there ought to be a rule at some point that for every item that comes in the front door, one has to be carted out the back door.

That said, my wife came home with a couple plants for her, a tub of extra-large size Legos, a multicolored garbage truck and a few other items for the kids to leave under foot until they grow out of them – if they haven’t already. It’s hard to keep up, they change so fast. Not surprisingly, after carting the new loot home, nothing old has been thrown out to make way for the new.

For my part, I was sentimental by proxy and decided to give the orange and black Halloween place mats a home. Of course by late October I may have forgotten where they got stored. I may even no longer be around to try and remember. Since the only sure thing is mutability, six months from now the yard sale may be for my beloved possessions. And the never used witchy placemats go on the block again. The truest description of our life on earth is, it’s only a matter of time.

Shelley, Wordsworth, Housman, Hardy all repeat this theme. Here’s Edmund Spenser, who would have looked upon a yard sale and trembled.

Times do change and move continually.
So nothing here long standeth in one stay:
Wherefore, this lower world who can deny
But to be subject still to Mutabilitie?