I pulled into the antique store yesterday on a whim.

Weeks of staying in had me needing to be out, so I decided to take a drive.

Down backroads, through marshlands and back to the highway. Music playing, windows cracked, third gear sticky as Stella and I struggle to find our groove. But we don’t spend much time in third so we fumble through it on our way to sixth and wide open spaces.

It is somewhere between fourth and fifth gear, just before civilization gives way to something more wild, half way through a never ending Tool song, that I remembered the antique shop.

A quirky place as those places tend to be; and I kind of sort of “need” a storage cabinet for extra sheets and towels, so I decided if the parking lot was empty I would make a stop.

It was so I did.

The cabinet pickings were slim and I was about to head out when the older man who runs the shop remarked that he had seen me looking at the old pictures and frames. Wondered if I might be interested in seeing something really old, directed my gaze up above the cluttered shelves and busy spaces, to a lithograph hanging half forgotten, above the fray.

I was immediately smitten.

Mesmerized by the sepia stained couple and the hopefully just sleeping man, in a vessel too small for the sea.

Then, I was given the story.

The piece, it seems had once been owned by a related-through- marriage -relative of the man who owned the shop. This far removed relation was one of the early mayors of Brunswick; J. Hunter Hopkins. Who, according to my new friend, lived a few blocks from where I now reside.

The proximity is what got me.

Got me thinking.
Got me wondering.

Because this was not the first time I have been drawn to items I suspect are trying to return home.

Shortly after moving here, in a different antique store, I was drawn to a set of Victorian couches. I thought, even though they were not really my taste, they belonged, without a doubt, in our front parlor. I had almost convinced myself that they were comfortable, when I looked at the price tag and deemed them no longer an option.

Fast forward to a few months ago. I was sitting on my front porch when the last owner of our house made a stop to another property he owns across the street from us. In the back of his truck were the same couches I had been admiring at the antique shop. Turns out he owned the couches; they had resided in the front parlor of our house until he sold the house to us and no longer had room for them. He then took them to the antique shop (which was now closing causing him to reclaim his unsold items) where I crossed paths with them.

Looking back at the listing photos of our house, I spotted the couches. So perhaps it was my subconscious putting together pieces. Filling in blanks.

But…..I recently picked up a copy of our local magazine, Golden Isles. I was particularly interested in this issue because there was a spread about old houses in the downtown area.

One of the old houses featured had recently been bought by a family new to the area. The new owner of the house spoke about how she frequented the local thrift and antique shops to furnish her new old home. She told of the coincidence of giving her delivery address, only to be informed that the pieces she had been drawn to had originated from the very house she was now living in.

I wonder if she too had seen these items in the background of listing photos. Had come across them while touring the house. Had somehow failed to notice them on a conscious level.

Or….if the items had somehow noticed her. Had sensed something familiar, had picked up on her connection to a place they once called home. A place they longed to return to.

I think about the long forgotten life of these half forgotten things as I load my newly acquired lithograph in the insanely beautiful wood carved frame , into my car and return it closer to home than it has been in a hundred years.