Finding Grace in Facebook Marketplace
Author’s Note: This encounter happened in May, which is when I first drafted this piece. I’m sharing this story with you now because I’m still very moved by it, and I hope it affects you in a similar way.
Social media gets a lot of flack for all manner of sins these days, and I’ll be the first to admit that quite a bit of that flack is justified. Social media pushes us to polish our lives for the consumption of others, to hide any hardship we might face. It’s polarizing, and it is too often used to spread disinformation and sow division. But social media has good things too — it lets me stay in touch with my college community, there’s a whole host of people posting workout content so that I’m never bored in my attempts to “quaran-tone”, and it turns out that it can be a pretty good place to sell stuff.
Me, I’m trying to sell a coffee table.
In fact, according to the listing on Facebook Marketplace, I’ve been trying to sell a coffee table for the better part of 5 months. It’s from Restoration Hardware — but I bought it at the furniture equivalent of a sample sale so it’s not like I’ve been holding out on price. It’s not the damage on the top from before I figured out I ought to use coasters like an adult either — Restoration Hardware has said that they can fix that for whoever buys it. No, the primary two reasons I still have this coffee table are as follows:
The first is that I am a master procrastinator. I knew I was moving, and I knew I didn’t want the table anymore. Still, I didn’t list it until just a couple of weeks before I moved. It didn’t sell despite some interest so it came with me to my new apartment where it has been sitting, as it always has, between my couch and my TV. It has been listed ever since then, but I got busy and then, well…. that brings us to reason number two.
Reason number two is Covid-19, obviously, and in particular that I’m not at home. Well, I am at home — my childhood home, with my parents, across the country from my other home of two and a half years or so in New York. That plus the pandemic situation we find ourselves is not particularly conducive to selling a coffee table, so I resigned myself to putting the whole endeavor on hold until things went back to normal, whatever that might look like.
That being said, for some reason people are still asking me about the coffee table. It’s weird. The whole city is under shelter in place, but people are still messaging to ask me if the coffee table is still available. “It is,” I tell them, “but I’m not in the city right now and won’t be until after this passes. Sorry about that.” And for the most part, people either thank me and say they understand or they ignore me. But the listing stays up (under ‘Pending’) because, as I mentioned, I’m a procrastinator and haven’t bothered to take it down.
One person has been particularly persistent. I left New York on March 12. She first reached out on March 1, but we couldn’t agree on a price. However, she was still interested and reached out again at the end of April to see what the story was, and was perfectly polite and understanding when I gave her my usual “Sorry, not around, pandemic” response. I told her I would follow up when I returned to the city, and that seemed to be the end of it. And then she reached out again about a month later, in May.
Now, I’m not proud of this but my reaction to seeing another message from her was mostly annoyance. I had told her that I would get back to her when I was back in the city and there was no reason to think that I had returned. But when I responded and said that I was still away (a little brusquely, I admit), she surprised me. She asked, “How are you?” And I paused for just a minute to appreciate the little bit of normalcy in that question. I told her I am well, which I am, and that I’m lucky to be with family, which I am. It turns out she’s in New Jersey, watching and hoping as things seem to start settling down just the slightest bit. She’s wishing for normal, like me — whatever that might look like in the future. She told me to stay safe, and I told her the same. I told her I would see her on the other side.
At that moment we were connected just a little bit more as people, as humans, finding our way through these weird times together. She still needs a coffee table — maybe even more so now than before since she’s stuck at home. I still need to sell mine. There are parts of our lives that are moving forward despite everything, and it’s up to us to find a way to move forward with them as best we can. Social media has a lot of problems, but whatever its faults it’s really good at helping you find the person you need when you need them. And it turns out that sometimes who you need is a woman who wants to buy your coffee table, making sure that you are safe and well and reminding you that while we are apart right now, we are not alone.
Postscript: Since I wrote this piece I have returned to New York and the coffee table has (finally) been sold, marking the end of this particular saga. Stay well, everyone.
