nostalgia

I can somewhat remember receiving the Scholastic book catalogue...its flimsy, newspaper-like pages...sitting at my desk slowly perusing and filling out the little order form at the back with my choices. Money was involved, I suppose, but I can't remember that part at all. Were there envelopes involved? That would be nice. But oh! I remember very clearly sitting at my desk, tingling with anticipation as I watched my teacher lift out little piles of books, each with the long skinny order form tucked in the top book of each child's bundle. Our very own stack of books, carefully chosen, waited for patiently, about to be put in our hands!


Do you remember?

Seven months...I surely didn't mean to be away so long. I suppose I have been writing elsewhere...and I have mostly been reading old and familiar things for the past many months. Not alot to share as I've shared them before (Wise Child, Juniper, Rosamunde Pilcher). I've been wanting familiar, cosy, easy...but none-the-less nourishing, interesting, enlightening. I've actually found many beautiful, domestic things in my reading, but am gathering them up to share at The Bower and in the new place I am preparing for the New Year.


I've found, finally settling down into caregiving, that I can't go terribly deep with books in this season of my life. I never know when my train of thought will be interrupted, day and night. I can't read anything dark or very challenging, because daily life has those at its edges now, and that is enough of that for me. I went on a real Rosamunde Pilcher bender all the late Summer and early Autumn, but had come to the end of them and had to find something else and found my old copy of The Girl Who Ran Away on the upstairs bookshelves (in my sons' rooms, where all the childrens' books-mine and theirs-reside) and plunged in. My goodness...it deserves a whole post and I hope that I will actually get to that post one day soon, but suffice it to say I recognized myself in its pages, realized that it was one of the books that helped to make me who I am, that allowed me to be a more authentic version of me than I might have been otherwise.


It led to a short Scholastic Book fest...but I petered out after Little Plum and The Shy One. Some books hold up and some don't. Little Plum did (I was so glad to get reacquainted with Miss Happiness and Miss Flower...in fact, a Rumer Godden bender may be next on the agenda), the Shy One didn't and I am now back to "grown up" books, in search of my next Rosamunde Pilcher.

Life is so good when there is a book to take from the shelf over my bed, where I tucked it late the night before, to the kitchen sofa in the quiet afternoon, or to toss in my bag on town days just in case there is a peaceful hour or two, and then fish out and bring back to bed in the evening....a thread through my days and nights.