There’s something sad about an estate sale.

I can’t go to one of these things without feeling a little bit vulturous, jostling with the other vultures and swooping down to retrieve the scraps of a life from a folding table of knick knacks.

In fact, it might be impossible to go to an estate sale–or to a curiosity shop, for that matter–and not get emotional. You’re safe in a regular retail store full of new, mass-produced merchandise because there aren’t stories attached to those items—yet; they haven’t become meaningful. But at an estate sale, unless you are heartless, you inevitably supplement your own memories and experiences and connotations to what’s already there in the context of another person’s intimate space, their home.

Of all the things I’m perennially on the lookout for, of all the things I actually need (the dresser!), it’s something I don’t need at all that I can’t stop thinking about: a hand-tinted photographic portrait of a pretty girl in a light blue dress. She wears a feather on one shoulder, sort of a sad expression, and is framed in oval gilt (I’m such a sucker for ovals) with tiny colorful floral decorations at top, bottom, and both sides. She was looking right at me this morning, imploringly. So pretty. So sad.

I looked back. What would I do with her? Who is she, anyway? How did she wind up here? Did she even belong to the estate being sold (did she turn into someone’s nasty old mother-in-law–is that it?) She’s very pretty and all, but my own great-grandmother’s lovely and earnest wedding portrait is still sitting unframed in a closet. Hadn’t I really better tend to her before I bring home a complete stranger? Don’t I already have a strange little girl from the ’30s or ‘40s–someone else’s mother–in an unusual rectangular frame sitting in The Totally ‘80s Guest Room waiting to be replaced my own mother’s much cuter 1940s portraits?

My neglected great-grandmother.

She keeps looking at me, and I keep wondering: about the feather at the shoulder, the bobbed hair, the hand(?)-colored details, the ripped paper on the back of the frame… All the clues that will date this portrait and all the ponderings that can never be answered. Who is she? Why doesn’t anyone want her?

In his essay “Mind in Matter,” material culture scholar Jules Prown says, “Inherent and attached value…is another major element in what survives. …Objects with iconic or associational value are preserved, but when they lose that association ([for example,] photographs of unknown ancestors), they become disposable.” Curiosity shops abound in evidence of this loss. There’s certainly no shortage of adorable or earnest or poignant old, hand-tinted photographs out there. Young sailors, new brides, children posed in their Sunday best. Once you start adopting strange ancestors, when can you ever stop?

How did I wind up on a folding table in the living room among odd pieces of glassware and ceramic knick knacks made in China? The young girl in the portrait seemed to want to know. Her eyes were really boring into my soul now. Why can’t anyone see my inherent value? How did I become disposable?

I plead–internally, of course–my frameless great-grandmother and the midcentury orphan–someone else’s mother–I’ve already got at home.

Someone else’s mother.

To no avail. The associational value of the estate sale has worked its magic. I’m already shuffling my schedule so I can go back tomorrow morning to see if she’s still there. For half price.