“When I realized it was a book, I
knew it was from Mom.” Heard at the family Christmas party a
couple years ago after my daughter opened her Grab Bag gift.
Books, to me, are the closest thing to
sacred that any possession could be.
As a little girl, I remember a set of
books from Disney that I read over and over – except for the boy
stories, like Jungle Story and Robinson Crusoe, which just never
appealed to me. Old Yeller was one of the stories I read only once.
It was horrifying.
I ate up the Beverly Cleary books. I
read the Bobsey Twins books that my aunt had left behind at my
Grandmother's, the Nancy Drew Mysteries, the Trixie Belden series
(wouldn't it be cool to be named Honey, like Trixie's best friend?) I
also loved horses, so The Black Stallion series I scooped up in
junior high. Standing in front of that book shelf that covered the
south wall of our school library... the sense of pure pleasure is
something I can recall 36 years later. I can picture the spines,
recall the smell, and remember worlds impacted by none of my reality.
Then there was my high school library,
and the public library of every town I've ever lived in. I always
had a card. I love to sit at the tables surrounded by all that
wealth. Some girls may feel that way in a jewelry store, or in the
presence of designer clothes and bags. Some men may feel that way at
a car show.
I even admired the text books I
received the first day of school for history or English, not so much
Science. As a teenager, I could never fall asleep at my bedtime. I
would open my curtains and read book after book after book by the
light of a street lamp 100 feet from my bedroom window. I can safely
say that if this hurt my eyes, it didn't present symptoms for 30
years.
My family has its share of dysfunction,
which I've come to understand in the Self Help section of my local
book store. I had (have) the Pisces quality of struggling to finish
what I start, until I read books on how people ALMOST succeed at
almost everything but stop a step short. (This has caused an
entirely different set of issues ,because I'm not always sure when to
give up. Not everything I've “stuck with” has been a success
story.)
So, when I say I love books... I mean
it. When everyone in my family got Kindles, I felt personally
responsible for saving books. Tangible paper with the occasional ink
dot in the wrong place, fresh spines, beautifully soft paper that
feel as soft as bedsheets or cheaper, coarse paper of paperbacks. The
horror of waking to a world without books really scares me... and if
the power goes out.. so do our Kindle “books.”
I have a collection of books that teach
survival skills... and though I may never need them – I'll keep
them, in case someone else needs them someday.
Books took me everywhere I've never
gone.
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