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| Maggie and I in my library |
Contrary to what
my kids and some of my siblings think, I am not a hoarder. No one exactly
accuses me of that, but they often bring up funny episodes they’ve seen on TV
about hoarders. Wouldn’t you get the feeling they are sending out hints? Maybe
it’s because my garage located out by the barn has no room for my car.
It’s not as if I have narrow passage ways through newspapers stacked from floor
to ceiling or anything. I use my newspapers for the bird cages, to mulch my
gardens or take them to the recycling center. I’m also seriously thinking of
taking all my past issues of Writer’s
Digests and The Writer to the
recycling center. I did take a bunch to my local writers group to give away. I
only took a few back home. That was a start, wasn’t it?
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| Bookcase in the laundry room with Malice books. |
If I have
trouble getting rid of things, it’s because I was born at the end of the Great
Depression and grew up being taught not to waste things. Also, I have
sentimental attachments to things that hold memories. As an environmentalist, I
hate throwing anything into the trash, also. I started recycling when the first
recycling center was started in our county forty or fifty years ago even though
it wasn’t close to where I lived.
So I don’t
consider myself a hoarder except with one thing. Books. I have bookshelves in
every room of my house except the kitchen and bathrooms. But there is a small
table holding some of my cookbooks in the kitchen, and the back of the toilets
have books lined up on them. My library shelves are full to overflowing. The
living room has one book case and books on top of the piano and the seat of an
old school desk as well as on the coffee table. The sun room and laundry room each
have two book cases. The room off the upstairs bathroom with a desk and a few
chairs has three shorter book cases with only three shelves each. Until a few
days ago, I had one book case in my bedroom, one in the spare bedroom, one in
the upstairs hall and I was running out of places to put books. It got worse
when my sister Suzanne asked me if I’d take a box of my dad’s books that were
taking up space in her storage area. Of course, I said yes. So she brought me
four old Jack London volumes from the early 20th century, four
Sinclair Lewis volumes – two I already have in paperback, but hey, these were
my father’s. And there’s a matched set of twelve O’Henry novels, and a few
others, too. Sigh.
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| Some of the books in my living room. |
The books stayed
in the box my sister brought for over a month and then I saw two sturdy white
wooden bookcases at my daughter-in-law’s business – The Shabby Cedar Barn. I wanted
them. I needed them. So I bought them and my son and daughter-in-law delivered
them last week. I moved the bookcase I’d had in my bedroom to the spare room,
and the two new bookcases fit nicely side by side on one wall. So I’ve been
sorting and rearranging books and also filled bags and bags of books and took
them to my church rummage sale which starts today. So I’m not really a hoarder,
am I? Just a lover of books. I’ll try to stay away from the tables of books
when I go to the rummage sale today or tomorrow.
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| The new bookcases in my bedroom |
Leftover
Books
I pack the leftover
books from the sale.
Leftovers from the
lives of my mother and father.
Leftovers no one
wanted, not even strangers.
I remember these
books, bright colorful splashes
mitigating all that
green -
our celery green
shelves, celery green walls,
gray-green carpet, and
a big over-stuffed chair
aged to an
indeterminate color and texture;
a perfect place to
hibernate Sunday afternoons
when the snow buried
our little Cape Cod,
and boots melted by
the back door.
My brother Jerry
played “The Flight of the Bumblebee,”
the music undulating,
mixing with warm brown smells
of pot roast with
onions, potatoes and carrots.
Dad did the cooking
Sundays,
ahead of his time in
gender correctness,
while Mom, ripening
with another bibliophile
soon to be baby sister
Cathi, read and dozed nearby.
My sisters Elaine and
Suzanne played with paper dolls,
cutting and snipping,
giggling and chattering
as Christ on his
Crucifix looked down on
The
Silver Chalice, The Golden Bough,
Main
Street, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,
and us.
There were two walls
of books -
a time line of books
going back to my parents’ youth
Girl of
the Limberlost, O’ Pioneers,
The Life
of James A. Garfield, The Pickwick Club
and stretching forward into my future.
In those days I’d
snuggle deep
in the comfort of that
over-stuffed chair,
galloping the plains
on Wildfire, Flicka and Thunderhead
or solving mysteries
with Nancy Drew.
In that chair, the
future was only a nebulous vision
of a ranch with
hundreds of beautiful horses.
And so I sort these
books, the pile of books
I find I can’t part
with growing higher and higher.
Books from my past to
add to
the already
overflowing shelves of my present,
to be read someday in
the future.
What do you collect or can’t bear to part with?
