I am so grateful for the Classical Literature and English studies during my two years at the University of Utah. I am so grateful that I had an opportunity to work in a book store for two and a half years. 'O so grateful to meet the diversity of genres, novellas, hardbound, paperback, massmarket, and fictional characters.
When the world outside of me was tumbling, I could pick up a book and the elaborate language embraced me. The words healed the wounds of an emotionally-wrecked, desperately love seeking and wrought eighteen year old. Now, reading does not concede. Reading nurtures the mother still learning, and offers a friendship like-no-other.
I remember reading poetry for the first time and falling in love with Rimbaud, Tennyson, Thoreau, and Tagore. I remember exchanging verses of e.e. cummings with the first boy I fell in love with. I remember wantingwanting to be Jack Kerouac; caressing the new roads ahead, and starting a revolution. I remember visiting San Franciso, and staying in the City Lights library for hours. Here I was, standing in the very room of the beats; the beat poets! "Pinch me. Pinch me. Pinch me."
Gertrude Stein was a wonder. Faulkner a mystery. Voyages with Mr. Swift. Luxury with Scott Fitzgerald. Antiwar movements with Vonnegut. Learning forgiveness from Hugo. Following Alice with Lewis Carroll. The joy of comadarie in "The Wind In The Willows" by Grahame. Falling in love over-and-over again with Ms. Jane Austen.
I think I am left with this reflection, because my husband will be gone for a few months. Our love started with the discussion of books. Booker often jokes that he fell in love with my library at first-sight, and he always wanted to expand. The first two things we exchanged (when we were first dating) were "East of Eden", my favourite book, and "Les Miserables", his favourite book.
Before he left to South Carolina, we went through our library together to discuss what books to take, and store. We have a specific weight limit for all our items needed in Monterey. If we took our books or entire library, the books would be 3/4 of the required weight limit.
Today, I came across the pile of books he wanted to take. My fingers brushed a stack of books Booker had read for a modern Spanish literature class, and my heart ached. The tears began to ebb and flow; I was overwhelmed with sadness, and a sudden plea to have Booker back with me. In that defining moment, I was missing the husband terribly, and I let those stories of held-pressed tears release.
