Within the past few months, several things happened. (Okay, I started writing this in January 2021. Darn procrastination! So I’m just leaving those references.)
- My wife and I talked about books,
- the new year – 2021 for the win!
- my wife found a YouTube channel about a US couple that had settled in Porto, Portugal.
Paula and I both love books: the history of our interests that are bound up in them, revisiting and re-reading fiction, referring to the non-fiction. Just seeing some of the titles makes me smile. We both have one or two from our childhood, and ones from throughout our adulthood.
What would be a dining room for most people has always been the “library”, lined with four – no, actually 5 – bookshelves. That is in addition to some books in the craft room, next to the bed, and a shelf of work books for Paula.
I brought up the subject of physical books with Paula over the holidays. “How many books were you thinking of taking?”
“One shelf”, she said.
“I was thinking one shelf each, I said, gesturing to a single level of one bookshelf, about 32-36 inches,” I said, just to make exactly sure.
“Yes”, Paula said, indulging my repetition.
Wow, I thought. This is really real. That is not very many books compared to what we each have now.
But my viewpoint was actually already changing. Books I’ve carted around for decades, carefully packing up in a bunch of small boxes each time I moved, sometimes only really noticing them when I was packing or unpacking them.
Knowing most of those books were available in digital form, was a real freedom. Realizing that the books I’ve read are a part of me – the knowledge or emotions they produced in me – are in there. I’m okay if I can’t quote from them word for word or I don’t remember all the concepts.
I feel very light, unburdened, I guess, by those realizations. They didn’t come quickly, but that’s okay.
A last note: I’m not telling anyone else how many books they should or shouldn’t have. Hopefully it didn’t come across that way. When I see journalists or writers on video with rafts of interesting books behind them, I still have the same glee as always. That’s just not what I need or where I am right now.
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