Maria and I have been married more than five years now, we know one another very well. In many ways – the core of our beings – we are alike. We want the same kind of lives, we support one another, love one another. In some ways we are very different. Before I met Maria, I’m not sure I had ever set foot in a thrift store. I’m not a shopper, and I wear pretty much the same thing every day – jeans and work shirts. I usually get them online, or in a clothing store like Sam’s in Brattleboro, Vt.

Maria is allergic to shopping in any form. She bristles at the term, but she is viscerally cheap (she would say thrifty) and I have never heard her says she needs anything but a sewing machine, colorful fabrics, toilet paper and soap. She does love thrift and consignment stores, every piece of clothing she owns comes from one or the other.

And everyone loves her clothes, she is always being complimented on the say she dresses.

We love to hop in the car and drive to places, and I’ve realized recently that almost all of those places have a thrift shop there or close by. Yesterday, I found myself in a great thrift store, one of several in Brattleboro, Vt. Maria is purposeful in a thrift shop, she is quiet, alert, her eyes scan the racks for certain kinds of fabric and color, invisible to me, but instantly apparent to me.

Maria can look at a clothes rack and imagine a quilt, or hanging piece, or even, once in awhile, something to wear. She rarely buys anything, and when it does, it usually costs $6 to $10 dollars. I always needed things, she needs very little.

In the thrift stores, I hang back, stay out of her way. Maria never takes much time, hangs around too long, or talks much to the other customers.  She touches a shirt or sweater or blouse,  sometimes she will hold it up to a mirror. She makes sure everything is returned to it’s proper space. She seems to trawl through the racks shrewdly, she knows precisely what she wants and precisely what she doesn’t want. Once in awhile I will see something i think she might like or wear and point it out to her. I’m right about 25 per cent of the time.

But then, she is not an impulse buyer. If she buys two or three things, It’s a major shop.

I love the smell and feel of thrift stores, I think of a lot of purposeful, sensible women with practiced eyes.  They smile and nod to one another, but rarely speak. Thrift stores are quiet. I never know what I am looking at in a thrift stop, Maria does.

Maria is very much the artist, she sees colors and shapes in a different way than I do. I have come to love the thrift stores, I love to watch the people – very few men – work their way through the aisles, I try and guess where they will stop, what they might pick up, try on or wear.

Life is interesting in that way,  as in many others. The kaleidoscope changes, if you are alive and awake. Thrift stores are an integral part of my life now,  I know where the best bargains usually are. Maria uses them for her art as well as her clothes. They are important to her, thus important to me. When I think of towns and places we like, I now think of the thrift stores that we see, they have entered my neural system. I love the feeling of moving between the racks.