Practicing Graciousness

At one time or another we have all received a gift for which we have had to feign gratitude.  I was given many chances to hone this skill, as my Mom loved nothing better than to wrap an extraordinary number of presents for my birthday and for Christmas.  She thought I would enjoy the unwrapping as much as the actual contents.  My birthday is shortly before the traditional start of school, and I remember several instances of eagerly tearing open an alluring package to find . . . a half-dozen spiral notebooks.  Really.  I tried to act pleased, but I must not have been terribly convincing, as Mom would hasten to explain that she just wanted me to have "something else" to unwrap.

Mom is now in an assisted living facility, and her days of shopping for gifts of any kind are past.  Her memory is unreliable; her days are no longer filled with board meetings and accounting work but with bingo and Animal Planet.  But even as her world is narrowing and parts of her are slipping away, there are moments of grace and graciousness.

One day last week she called to tell me that several women had brought bags of new books to her facility and had given them away to the residents.  Mom was one of the first on the scene; as an inveterate bargain hunter, she was drawn like a moth to a flame.  But she did not want the books for herself; she said, "I know you like to read, so I got them for you."  She proceeded to read me the titles, and I could tell they were from a genre I generally do not care for, but I promised to remind her to give them to me the next time I visited.  I was so touched by her gesture that I could not bring myself to tell her that the books were really intended for the residents and their library.  I felt a bittersweet pang at her remembering that I like to read, and at her childlike assumption that ANY book would be one I would enjoy.

Saturday Mom was enormously pleased to present me the books, still in their bright gift bag.  A quick glance confirmed that two of the three would be secretly returned (unread) to the facility library.  I will read the third one, so that I can honestly tell her I've done so, should she ask.

This time, I did not have to feign gratitude.  The books are immaterial; the true gift is my seeing the happiness Mom drew from being able to give.

Oddly enough, out of all of the birthday gifts Mom gave me over the years, I cannot recall any specific items other than those spiral notebooks.  Perhaps the opportunity to practice graciousness was the "something else" for me to unwrap.  Thank you, Mom.  Really.

Spine Tingling

I grew up in a household of books.  There were large bookcases in our living room, Dad's study, a hallway, and my bedroom.  Some of my earliest memories are of my parents' reading to me from not only my own books but also from books I selected from their shelves.  I recall the multi-volume gardening encyclopedia that was one of my favorites; Daddy patiently read the names of the plants and flowers while I pored over the photographs.  The shrubbery volume was my least favorite . . . too plain!  I also gravitated toward some sort of home health encyclopedia: the four red volumes with gold spine lettering drew me like a beacon.  Hindsight tells me these were from the 1950's when polio was still a very real spectre on the health scene.  I was fascinated by the article about polio and the accompanying photograph of the "iron lung" machine.  Looking back, I'm sure Daddy didn't read the article word for word, but rather wove a story around the various photographs of a young girl who had contracted that feared disease. 

One particular two-volume set captured my imagination like no other, but I never selected them for reading (no illustrations!).  The art on the dust jackets formed the silhouette of a "robber" as I termed it, and I was fascinated by how these two books fit together.  Sometimes I even took the liberty of rearranging them so that the silhouette was split.  Daddy had a lightweight black raincoat, and one particularly gusty rainy night as he came in the door the wind caught the back of his coat, whereby I announced excitedly that he "looked like the robber on the books".  For that sheer sentimental reason, I brought those two books back with me during the summer my parents were packing for their big move.  I was delighted to discover that the title of this set is A Treasury of Great Mysteries, with full-length novels, "novelettes", and short stories by such greats as Dorothy L. Sayers,  Georges Simenon, Agatha Christie, and Mary Roberts Rinehart . . . all authors I love as an adult. 

Coincidence? Fate? No, just the good fortune to be raised in the midst of the written word, freely and lovingly shared.

The Captivating Spines

Note the red eye on the "robber"!

Part of the title page

No Jacket Required

As a child I spent many summer hours in the fabulous public library in my hometown.  After I was old enough to be left alone for a short time, Mom would drop me off at the children's entrance and then go about her grocery shopping.  From my perspective it was a jackpot situation:  having time to poke around the enticing collection of books and NOT having to endure the grocery store.  (I wish I had that same option today!) 

I do not remember much about how I selected particular books, but I do recall having a strong preference for those without dust jackets.  Something about the exotic geometric prints on the buckram covers must have triggered a subconscious "here lies a story" reaction; a bare book was also a reliable predictor of pages whose edges had acquired a downy softness, almost to the point of being frayed.  Those pages turned with a pronounced gentleness, each one floating to meet the cushion of the others.  Said books also possessed that peculiar "old library book" smell, which to me was as alluring as the scent of a fresh Christmas tree.  Both the tree and the book promised unknown treasures. 

I did not gravitate toward books with colorful cellophane-covered dust jackets; I did not like the crinkly sound they made, I did not care for their crisp pages and hard edges.  They appeared sterile, cold, and unwelcoming.  Their full-color cover illustrations seemed to rob me of my right to imagine the characters as I saw them.  I passed over them and sought the comfort of books softened by age and use.

After what seemed like two or more delicious hours in the library, but which was probably closer to 45 minutes, Mom would reappear, and together we would carry that week's selection of mellowed jewel-toned treasures to the checkout desk.  I felt the promise of their pages.

Living Outside the Box

For the time being, I am firmly planted in Congested Suburbia, USA, because
1. I need my job
2. My husband needs his job.
I am the Library Media Specialist (fka "librarian") in an elementary school in a very large suburban school district.  The position of LMS has been eliminated with alarming regularity in a number of districts nationwide, and I don't relish moving to Open Spaces, American West where my position might be a year-to-year gamble at best. But I have discovered a mystery series that lets me live, if even for a few hours, in the wide open spaces of Wyoming, imagining a place where human settlement is dwarfed by the sheer magnitude of the land.

I happened upon the Joe Pickett series by C. J. Box while searching for an audiobook for my car time.  Since I was at the mercy of what was available for free through our public library, I began with the sixth book in the series, In Plain Sight.  I thoroughly enjoyed the strong sense of place, the compelling plot, and the three-dimensional characters.  I immediately started reading the series in order, beginning with the first book, Open Season.

After doing so, I would impress upon others the importance of reading the series in order.  Without revealing too much, I will admit that having listened to In Plain Sight first, I knew how some situations were going to turn out in earlier books.  This knowledge wasn't enough to spoil the other books, but I didn't feel the full impact of the events. 

C.J. Box has created a most believable character in Joe Pickett, a game warden in fictional Saddle String, Wyoming.  Joe is far from perfect, and he sometimes suffers from errors in judgment, but this makes him more real to the reader.  Box also brings in environmental and conservation topics, and he does a fine job of showing the reader that there are very few pure black and white areas in these issues.  The shades of gray often provide fodder for many plot twists. 

There are few series where I try to have the next installment in hand before turning the last page of the current book, but this is one of them.  If you are longing for a literary escape to the West, try C.J. Box.