Steptoes Yard

There is a place about 45 minutes south of Aberdeen called Steptoes Yard. 

It’s basically a junk yard with three warehouses filled to the brim with every kind of houseware you could imagine. 

Entire china sets, dining room furniture, antique books, and wall décor all hidden beneath piles of discarded junk. If something strikes your fancy, you haggle with the owner until you agree on a suitable price.   

A few of my friends had stumbled on some diamonds in the rough lately, so when Kristal and Falene invited me along for a return trip, I figured it was worth a gander. I was quickly overwhelmed with just how much there was to sort through. 

I’m not usually the sort of person who can recognize the potential of cluttered hand-me-downs. I have decent taste, but I’m a very visual person- I have to see it all put together in front of me before I can make a decision. Every time we move, I have Jonathan rearrange the furniture in every possible combination before I can be confident of the right layout. I just can’t picture these sort of things in my head.  

So take me to a place like Steptoes where I have to dig through boxes of ceramics to find a hidden gem, and it’s not going to be a successful outing. If I hadn’t just gotten my tea set from Italy, I might have had the motivation to dig amongst the mismatched china sets to put together a hodge podge set. And I did like the various sets of ceramic Cavaliers they had on display... 

But my other hesitancy with buying anything was ‘baby brain’. I’m already stressed to the max that our house doesn’t have much space for a baby, so the thought of bringing anything else into our crowded home sends me into an instant panic attack. Sure, I love ceramic dog statues as much as the next person, but with baby on the way, I just think ‘well, that’s breakable’ and decide to forego the bidding process. 

I did dig through the old books and found one from the 40s called ‘The Motherhood Book’. 

It was like the ‘What to Expect’ book of it’s day and it had some quite humorous anecdotes. For instance, in addition to breast feeding or formula, you should spoon feed your baby orange juice. And, as for you women in your first trimester, you should never allow yourself to become sick, and if you do, you shouldn’t feel sorry for yourself. 

I should have bought it for the humor factor, but that last bit made me so mad that I placed it back on the shelf. It does help me to put in perspective how fleeting our parenting ‘knowledge’ is. Fifty years from now, some pregnant lady is going to pick up a present-day ‘antique’ book on co-sleeping or natural childbirth and think that our entire generation was backwards. 

It’s such a good reminder not to get too bogged down in the trendy parenting philosophy of the moment and instead, lean on prayer and God’s wisdom to guide us in parenthood. But no matter what, I’m pretty sure I won’t be spoon feeding my newborn orange juice…