An unexpected inheritance
and a passing of the mantle
This weekend, in the middle of a Facebook Marketplace crawl across Northumberland, something unexpected and magical happened. With plans to go camping in September with my partner, I spotted a few tents going for a bargain. All of a sudden, distracted by our furniture hunt, I asked to bundle a few tents that the same seller was offering, along with a few camping bits. They replied, saying they’d hold them and that they had a few more things to list that I might be interested in. I headed off to get some cash, and we drove about 20 minutes from home, got lost down a random farm track, finally being redirected to the right place.
We were greeted by a lovely woman with a ‘For Sale’ sign on her house. She told us that the sale and clearance were due to her getting ill. We were about to pick up the tents when a large easel caught my eye in the sale pile. “Is that easel for sale?” I enquired. “Someone’s already bought it. Are you into art?” My eyes lit up. “Yes!” I said with conviction. (What a difference a couple of weeks makes.) “Come in here,” she said. I followed her into a room with shelf lined the walls, a large wooden table, and boxes of art materials scattered around. Box by box, item by item, she said, “You can have this…”.
I think part of me couldn’t quite believe what was happening.
While Joe chatted in the other room about camping gear and walking routes with her partner, we talked about art. I showed her some of my work on my phone, while she dug out some of hers from stacks of papers. She was telling me about silk painting and stencil work, neither of which I’d ever tried. Box after box of paints, paint brushes, paper, pins, and silk began to pile up. Joe and her partner eventually came in, and all of a sudden, I could feel my childlike self being gifted their first paints. Only it wasn’t, but somehow from my creative rebirth, it felt just like that.
“Just play,” she said. “Have fun.” This kept being repeated throughout, like a mantra that I was being handed down. She had no idea how deeply that invitation landed. What it meant to me, what was going on behind the scenes. She even encouraged me to sell my cards, just like she did in the local gallery, for five pounds. She showed me the ones she made with some of the tools and materials she was giving me and gifted me one wrapped in cellophane, while saying something along the lines of, “If you’re as good as that, you’ll make great things with this” and she continued piling more and more things into the boxes.
This moment felt like the universe confirming, “Yes, you're on the right path.”
When we bid farewell, she said, “Good thing you asked about the easel, or this wouldn’t have opened up”. I smiled at the serendipity and the magic. I found myself wondering what unseen forces a hand in everything that had unfolded. How far back did it go, the thread that led to this precise moment? What choices were made? Was it when we decided to go camping? Was it spending hours on Facebook Marketplace looking for furniture for our new home? Was it before we even decided to move? Ahh, the magic and the mystery. Answering the call. Following the thread.
Interestingly, inheritance had been on my mind a lot lately, having spent time with friends who received inheritances. In conversations with them, I learned about how they felt and that it can be as much a burden as it is a blessing. Inheritance, I realised, wasn’t always a gift. Sometimes it was a weight. A story. A question. A silent whisper: What will you do with what’s been passed down to you? It made me question what it really means to inherit something. What if the most powerful legacies don’t come with a signature, but with a brush, paints and saying silently, “It’s your turn now”?
This woman gave me no will, no wealth, only her tools. Her story. And somehow, that felt heavier and more sacred than any inheritance.
I cried shortly after as we drove off. Overwhelmed by the generosity of this stranger. I thought about the inheritance of such precious objects. I thought about her character. I thought about the grief of your body no longer working like it once did. She had shown me her hand tremor pointing towards why she was gifting me pretty much her entire collection of art materials. I asked her how much for everything, even though I knew it was priceless, even though I knew the weight of what she was handing over to me. “Ten pounds”, she said.
With love and magic,
#AuthenticAlex
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