All the Books . . .
Dear Beautiful Soul,
From the time I was eleven or so my childhood home was a big old summer home on a corner lot on Signal Mountain, Tennessee. With the arrival of my younger sister and brother, we’d outgrown our previous home and so moved to a larger one, which was a whopping 2 blocks away.
In the foyer of our new house were floor to ceiling bookshelves, jammed with books. Beautiful, fantastic, wonderful books, which the previous owner had left to us. All the books! It was incredible, especially for a family of book lovers.
I remember standing in the foyer gazing up at row after row of books and feeling a mixture of wonder, elation and curiosity. It was the best gift in the world!
Most of our inherited library were books from the late 1800’s through the 1940’s. They smelled like age and dust and magic and the illustrations felt like time travel. I loved the covers and the bindings and the intricate type setting. One particularly stunning find was the personal diary of a Confederate soldier during his service in the Civil War. We also became the proud owners of the Harvard Classics, which I did not read in its entirety but I did feel that simply owning it gave us intellectual street cred.
I wanted to read all the books but realized that summer vacation was going to be the time to really get serious about it. During the school year there was homework, which consumed an inordinate amount of time . . .
I started my journey through the books with the most gorgeous copy of Anne of Green Gables. It had long forgotten pressed flowers in between some of its pages. I took it from its place in the library and went up the stairs to my bedroom and was transported to Prince Edward Island.
My bedroom faced the street and in it was the most magical place—a window seat—tucked into a nook in the wall. The window looked out into a huge old shade tree that was my very special reading friend. I would tuck into the window seat and read for hours, then put my book down and gaze out at my tree to discuss, telepathically, what we’d just learned. Trees love a good book. This is a Universal truth.
The house didn’t have air conditioning and so windows were opened and fans deployed in the humid summer months. We had a very active honeysuckle vine that grew on a trellis off the front porch. I remember smelling honeysuckle especially at night as the air cooled off (finally) and the cicadas started singing.
Now that summer is here, I am feeling that yearning to gather up an armful of books and hide out in my room, tucked into the window seat, talking to my tree. It’s funny how the seasons remind us of past moments of deep resonance. I still want to read all the books, I am still that eleven year old gazing up and up at row after row of books. And I still talk to trees. About all the books.
Books and trees, all the books and all the trees really, are very good
.
Let’s keep the good going and growing . . .
XO Laura
PS What’s on your summer reading list? I’ve just finished The Armor of Light by Ken Follett and am reading both Justinian’s Flea by William Rosen and Thieves of Baghdad by Matthew Bogdanos/William Patrick. It’s been suggested that I search out some “light reading”. Hmmm . . . got any titles to recommend?