Window into the Past
I remember the day Evan and I packed up our books.
We were recently married, moving to the NYC suburbs, and in the middle of a purge-induced adrenaline rush. We parted ways with dollar store kitchen utensils, tossed all 90s fashion, and left our used-to-be-white couch on the sidewalk for bulk trash. We saved our books for last, because there were hundreds, and we needed to clear the floors before we took them off the shelves and put them into boxes.
It ended up taking longer than we had time for, because what began as packing, evolved into favorite-passage-swapping. I’d read something from Philip K. Dick’s Valis, and Evan would offer something from Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles. From there it escalated into some kind of Shakespearian Jeopardy.
“I’ll take ‘Princes Who Dodged the Bullet’ for $1000, Alex.”
Of course, Evan kicked my ass. While I had merely read Shakespeare in college, he had spent a lot of time playing those princes at Juilliard. But though his knowledge and handle on the text were greater than mine, we were an equal match when it came to the passion we felt for our favorite writers.
It was well past midnight when we placed the last box on the moving truck, and we still had to drive 30 minutes to Montclair, unpack, and return our crummy U-Haul by 8am. Essentials were taken to the appropriate rooms, and non-essentials, like our books, were stacked in storage.
We intended to purchase shelves and turn our guest room (oh yes! a real live guest room!), into a library. But before that happened, a baby happened, and the guest room became a nursery. And once our son arrived, I had no time to think about 17th century literature or shelves.
Last year while packing for our move to Paris, we shuffled the books from our basement to a rented storage space. As we stood surveying the 10×10 room that would safeguard everything we still owned while we moved overseas, we laughed. The books we hadn’t seen, touched or read in 5 years took up at least half the room. We had spent weeks ruthlessly editing our possessions (“if we haven’t used it in 6 months, it goes!”), yet here were these 20 boxes of books. They were like one big middle finger to feng shui.
It was one year ago that we moved the books yet again. We were back from Paris and settling in to our new home in Glen Ridge. For a year they collected dust in our closet on the top floor. During breakfast yesterday, I was trying to recall a line from Matthew Arnold’s Sweetness and Light, and decided it was time to stop depriving myself of my favorite Norton Anthology. While Google is good for a quick, cheap fix, I wanted more. I wanted my notes in the margins, I wanted all of my favorite words together in a beautifully bound book, I wanted to reconnect with the people who connected me to the person I wanted to be back then.
What began as a focused expedition to find my Norton Anthology quickly evolved into a blissful leafing through our books. I called Evan upstairs and we spent most of the afternoon rediscovering the words of our favorite authors. We were shocked that it had been six years, that we had two kids, that we had built careers and started a business. But what struck me the most was that I had spent six years filling my thoughts with the banal logistics of daily life, preachy parenting tomes or investing how-tos. In figuring out adult life, I had little time to question what Simone de Beauvoir saw in Jean Paul Sartre or why Wordsworth was able to so eloquently convey the flapping of a bird’s wings.
While we spent hours unpacking our books, our two sons played in the adjacent room. I overheard bits and pieces of conversations about Egyptian kings, dinosaurs and a magic tree house. I had the sudden urge to go downstairs and collect the parenting books. I packed them into one of the empty boxes, sealed it shut and put it in the closet to collect dust.
We ended the day with fourteen piles. Books divided by genre or period. But we agreed our favorite pile is the books we plan to someday read with our kids.
28 Comments
Adele @ modernemotive
June 7, 2010Beautiful post!
Maureen
June 7, 2010When I lived in Bangkok, my books were the last things to be packed when we were moving to our next assignment. My now xh suspected that we would be over our weight limit with them, so he left me there with no furniture to watch the weigh in. He and the children slept at the InterContinental and I slept on the bare teak floors, but all my books were saved.
My 2nd husband is much more understanding and has his books everywhere, just as I do.
Three Owls
June 7, 2010What a great post…. I recently dragged home a stack of books from the 'free store' that were discarded from the local university library… such a lovely and odd collection of thoughts.. Burroughs, Bronte, and Shaw to name a few… lots of happy reads ahead. And good call on the packing up of parenting books… I always find that sort of advice stifling…
katieleigh
June 7, 2010Oh, I love this, Nichole. I never feel truly at home in a place without a few favorite books around. And it's nearly impossible to "weed out" or "cull" them…especially the most beloved ones.
Noodles and Waffles
June 7, 2010You're a wonderful story teller! Thanks for making my lunch break such a nostalgic one.
Anonymous
June 7, 2010Thank you for this beautiful post. My fiance and I spent the better part of this weekend trying to find room for our enormous collection of books. Neither of us can part with even one, it seems. We have put bookshelves everywhere in our home – our bedroom, the guest rooms, the living room and even the dining room. I know that once children enter our lives it will become hard to justify the space these precious tomes take up but for now they happily fill our home.
tamara
June 7, 2010Great post. Your photos are always so lovely, and these words are just as great.
Anna Walker
June 7, 2010Oh my gosh! That is the sweetest thing ever! You two sound perfect!
P.S. Have any suggestions on good books to read? I'm always looking
http://annawalker1992.blogspot.com/
sideoats + scribbles
June 7, 2010We have a whole room full of bookshelves, and the carpet has a trail worn through it. Looks nasty. We were talking this morning over breakfast, and we both weren't looking forward to moving all the books out of the way — have some in there since our college days. And some from childhood, including The Black Stallion and Little House on the Prairie series.
But now I will think of your post and smile — can't wait to show my sweetie.
jenna@sweetfineday
June 7, 2010nice. sounds like a lovely weekend.
Brigid of FrenchLogic
June 7, 2010Not so bookish people wonder why bookish people buy books instead of borrowing. I thinks it is because we like to have these good friends around us whether we ever read them a second time or not. Falling in love with characters and stories makes them a part of our lives; past, present, and future. Thanks, I think I'll close the laptop and open a book!
Shelley Trbuhovich
June 7, 2010this is a gorgeous post. our books have travelled the world with us and now that we are 'back home' in melbourne, australia, majority still have to sit in boxes until the glorious day we finally get around to having in-built floor to ceiling shelves. our two little boys are avid readers which means that we are accumulating more by the second, but i cannot part with any of them. i could tell you where i got every book and where i was in my life.
Katie
June 8, 2010"I wanted my notes in the margins, I wanted all of my favorite words together in a beautifully bound book, I wanted to reconnect with the people who connected me to the person I wanted to be back then."
beautiful
Angela (Posy Moe)
June 8, 2010What an emotionally evocative post! Thank you for such elegance today.
alexkeller
June 8, 2010APPLAUSE!!!
amberlife
June 8, 2010My husband has never been able to understand why I both keep and reread so many of my books. I think that if I was stranded on a desert island books would be the things that I miss the most (apart from a glass of cold white wine). Both my children were great readers and I think that it's kind of sad that reading has almost become a thing of the past for so many children. Great post!
kim
June 8, 2010Lovely post! I'm moving later this year and am not looking forward packing and hauling my books again. Parting with them is unthinkable though. I'll bear with the moving madness for now and think of the time I'll be able to store them in a future home with a proper (ultimate fantasy) library where they'd stay put at last.
Everton Terrace
June 8, 2010I enjoy reading and have felt the power of words rattle me in my core but I don't think I have this deep of a connection to books. My daughter does. All her life (she is 24) her books, read and waiting to be read, have been her most loved treasures. A few years ago we were moving into our current home and I was storing mountains of books she couldn't let go of. I forced her to get rid of about 6 boxes. I don't think I understood. Now, after reading your post, I feel the urge to go out and get them all back for her.
actualization
June 8, 2010That was THE best post I've read in a loooong time, which is saying something because I read a few hundred blog posts each week. What a lovely glimpse of a happy life.
Louis Duke
June 8, 2010This has to be the best post I have read this year.
When we moved to Indonesia for missions work we hauled over 2000 books with us. No joke. My mom is a teacher and father is a minister, so book love is an addiction in this household. Every family member has over 500 of their own books. My dad has thousands. We have two library rooms at our home, and the walls of my fathers office are bookshelves.
Literature is a way of life.
lisa
June 8, 2010i love this. thank you so much for sharing this wonderful story. my bf and i moved in together this past fall and he lovingly hauled box after box after box, heavy with books, into our new home with a bemused expression on his face.
Kayla Poole
June 9, 2010Can you please write a book, Nichole? I would buy it and probably talk about it like you just did in this post. Thanks for that
Celeste
June 9, 2010My husband and I moved 26+ boxes of books from Seattle to Lexington, KY, and we'll be moving at least that many from Lexington to Jackson, MS. Our occasional sales to Half-Price Books only serve to give us time to browse for something new to add to our library.
Certain books require multiple copies, too–the beautiful hardback of a classic and its companion paperback that gets dragged all over town or loaned to a friend.
Great post! Your photography is wonderful, also.
Chic 'n Cheap Living
June 9, 2010So sweet. I keep little trinkets, purses, and books for a future family. We haven't moved that much of our old things from my parent's house (oh my room is a storage unit indeed) but love that we'll collect a few new things too though not too much!
Corinna White Charlton
June 11, 2010your post gave me goosebumps. i have a love affair with books like you. and want my future children to read as voraciously and passionately as i do!
Katie
June 14, 2010One of my favorite posts I've read in awhile. Probably because my Nortons are currently packed away in the basement of our new home. And even though they've only been there for a few weeks, it's been too long.
Lim
June 20, 2010@Brigid of FrenchLogic and amberlife-My father once asked (in a very beligerent way, I might add) why I re-read books. I was in a smart-ass mood and so replied, "How many times have you seen this episode of Seinfeld?"
He hasn't bother me about re-reading again.
Oh, and I did immediately apologize for taking a tone.
I'd like to repeat what so many have said about this post: Beautiful.
nichole
June 20, 2010I've really enjoyed reading all of these comments!