In Pursuit of a Spoon

A collection had been taken up and there had been little left behind. After all, Samantha Lamb was a collector of all things and had been so for almost half a century.

She had scores of novels, antique travel posters, petticoats worn by famous movie stars, typewriters with missing keys, purses, jewelry, hatboxes, figurines, and anything and everything she could find from the 1904 World's Fair.

She collected postcards with handwritten notes on them. Empty ones were bad luck, even worse than a penny with no backside. Oh, and she collected those, too. Coins with misprints--or no prints at all.

And as the collection grew in size, the open space in her home, the modest periwinkle Victorian at the end of Lockheart Lane, grew smaller and smaller until it was only her bedroom that wasn't cluttered.

On a Tuesday, Samantha woke up early, nearly five in the morning, and she took to her flashlight collection, seeking out the green and brass one her grandfather gave her just before he died. In fact, it was this gift that ignited her desire to be a collector. She always remembered what he said when he handed it to her. "Lead the way," he whispered, as he drifted off for good.

She took the flashlight, roaming from room to room, climbing through piles of things she could barely remember buying. Each room was more occupied than the last. And in the study is where the light led to the only book she ever read, The Old Man and the Sea. She realized all the other books had been purchased to color the shelf, to add to the collection, to prove to herself that she was a bibliophile.

And suddenly, without so much as a gasp, she couldn't breathe. She felt overwhelmed by the fact that the life she had amassed, the entire history she had built here, was, in fact--not her own. She had a nostalgia for books that never belonged to her, jewelry that she never wore, and for a life she never led.

Samantha had let her grandfather down. This she knew. With this grave acceptance, she took the Hemingway novel off the shelf, found a green wool blanket, and cloaked herself in regret. She had stockpiled the memories of strangers who never even knew her in return. There she lay...with an empty dance card.