My Life in Books

This post is a tribute to some of the books that I’m finally letting go of. At first I felt “forced” to let the books go because of contamination from being in a house with toxic mold. I’m incredibly sensitive to even small amounts of mold, and though that should change eventually, I had to ask myself, do I want to keep something that has the potential to make me sick, in case it doesn’t later?

Books have a false sense of scarcity to me. Especially old books. They just seem like they should be precious. Like someday they’ll all be electronic and something will be lost. Maybe I’m just getting old.

After talking with friends on Facebook, I decided that any that I really wanted to replace I would just get new copies of, but a strange thing happened. When I held them one by one and fully processed what they meant to me, I found I didn’t need to.

The first step in the process that I follow, after gathering all the books, is to hold each one and note how I feel. Those that “bring me down”, making me feel heavier, more fearful, less competent, I thank and let go.  That part was easy. The difficult ones were those that brought on a smile, a feeling of connection. Usually, those would be the ones to keep, but in this case I needed to go deeper.

2016-05-04 18.48.35

Above were the books I had been hoping to keep when I did a first pass last year, out of the hundreds we started with. I’m going to put the interesting ones into the story they represent.

I grew up on a hippie community called The Farm. In grade school I had a teacher who would read to us from a book every day. One of the first science fiction books I was ever exposed to this way was The White Mountains, a dystopian, aliens-take-over the world coming of age story that felt life changing until I read it later with my son and it wasn’t all that compelling to either of us. Still, I’ve held onto these (not the original copies as I never owned them) as a reminder of that shift.

2016-05-04 12.39.17

People didn’t really own books on the community, not like we do in our society today. I remember the local bookmobile coming to our school every month or two and getting new books. Another teacher suggested I read “1984” several years before that year would arrive, and if I had a copy it would fit well, right after the missing third book in the above series.

Jane Auel’s series was an early favorite of mine, and this hardbound Valley of Horses is one of the only books I owned from my teenage years. The rest of the series were replaced later.  I had thought these would be a prime candidate for an Amazon wish list, but ever since being in a regular writing critique group, I have a hard time reading them without noting the sometimes poor and rambling quality of the writing. I realized I really just liked holding onto them, but didn’t actually need to own a copy when I can easily get them again if I want.

2016-05-03 21.00.14

This little booklet on shoeing horses hold lots of fond memories. But they aren’t from the book itself, just what it represents. Really, the only page inside that resonated was the anatomy chart below. Knowledge of horse anatomy charts was one of the requirements for getting to be on the “pony crew” and be assigned to a pony. Each pony would have three or four kids taking turns throughout the week caring for it and getting to riding it to school in winter, and to the swimming hole in the summer.

2016-05-05 16.20.36 2016-05-05 16.20.20

Here are another set of old favorites that haven’t been opened in years. I loved this series (though different copies, I’m sure) as a teen. The writing was sophisticated, and so were the themes. Someday I’ll read them again, but electronically will work well enough. I don’t need them to sit around and wait for me.

2016-05-04 12.37.52

These weren’t even my books, but I had a hard time letting them go. Everyone else in the house had let go of the idea of owning old books, and these seemed like they deserved more respect than that.

These particular ones were my husband’s from before we met. I was a sci fi fan too when we met and loved his extensive collection. Decades later, our son and he read these, a little each night. Thank you, original LOTR books.

2016-05-04 12.21.24

Does this book look familiar to anyone? It’s from the community I grew up on.

2016-05-05 16.20.56

We had our son in 1997. I always wanted to be a household that had lots of books around. Trains, Boats and Trucks was Mike’s, I think, and these Richard Scarry books I bought used when they reminded me of my own childhood. I was happy to share them with our son, but they are really only nostalgic for me. It saddens me that he never picks up a physical book anymore. It’s all Reddit now.

I was going to keep them for the proverbial grandkids, but I don’t want to live my life waiting for things that may not happen anymore. The picture in my head of the future only gets in the way of it coming true. I’d rather live in 2016.

2016-05-04 12.48.38

Our son loved animals even more than he liked vehicles. Here is what I’d saved from that era.

2016-05-04 12.50.10

We loved “Good Dog, Carl.” Carl, the dog, takes care of the baby while mom is away. So sweet.2016-05-04 12.53.17 2016-05-04 12.54.19 2016-05-04 12.53.37

2016-05-04 12.56.122016-05-04 12.56.27 2016-05-04 12.54.382016-05-04 12.55.04

“Only the Cat Saw” was such a sweet story. It also was one of the first books that I had which pictured a mom breast-feeding a toddler, and normalized getting up in the middle of the night to do so.

2016-05-04 12.51.022016-05-04 12.51.282016-05-04 12.52.072016-05-04 12.52.34

This one brought up strong mixed feelings for me. It never was a favorite of Alex’s, but I found myself having a hard time letting it go. When I browsed through it, I realized why. It showed an idylic family with a little boy (with two dogs instead of cats, but I made allowances.) At the end, the little boy gets a sister. We tried for another child for years, and I secretly, desperately wanted a little girl to make our family complete. All of that desire has been gone for years, but the bittersweet feelings remained enmeshed in the pages of this book, probably along with some of the mold residue that was the likely culprit for the long series of miscarriages I suffered. I had already let go of the dream; it is time to fully let go of the vestiges of the path not taken.

2016-05-04 12.56.422016-05-04 12.57.082016-05-04 12.57.50

When my son was young, I so wanted to find the key to parenting just right such that the chaos and stress and hard would go away. I have so many areas that a subconscious part of my brain wishes I could do more perfectly, and it’s time to let go. Said kid is 19 and blooming into a caring, witty, and amazingly intelligent adult. It’s time that I let go of parenting books and stop taking it personally when he doesn’t shower or clean his room. I’ve done my job more than adequately and it’s time to move forward. But if I needed a parenting book, here are the first ones I’d reach for.

2016-05-04 12.59.20

I needed to have a similar conversation with myself about homeschooling regrets. It’s time to let go of the feeling that there was so much more we should have found a way to cover. We ended up with a guy that cares and analyzes everything deeply, caucuses for Bernie Sanders, and could teach a course on astrophysics based on his work in a video game. (Kerbal Space Program, also known fondly in our household as “the best $25 of homeschooling money ever spent”).  It’s enough. It really is.

2016-05-04 12.47.442016-05-04 12.45.00

And of course, the same lessons apply to myself. I need to remember I’ve learned a lot over the years. Instead of looking for a book to tell me how to live, I need to simply take the advice I give everyone else.

2016-05-04 12.33.09

At the same time I was trying to learn how to do less, I was also trying to be good at everything. These books taught me that I don’t need to hold onto placemarkers to remind myself I can be creative (though the top two I may buy again someday…I did copy a few favorite pages for ideas.)

2016-05-04 18.41.00

I inherited this and a more recent cookbook and they are both adorable, and mold-contamination free so I could keep both if I wanted. But I realized although the pictures are great, I don’t need a collectible cookbook. For me, that’s not the point of a cookbook. I kept the more recent as it’s laid out better and has more content.  Luckily I have a sister that adores unique cookbooks.

2016-05-05 16.22.052016-05-05 16.26.47

“So, what would you do with extra time?”  My acupuncturist asked me that recently, and for the first time my answer was unhesitant.  “Write.”

But instead of trying to read all the examples I find of memoirs that are in my genre, I just need to take the ….oh, my, it’s up to 166,000 words, that I’ve already written and pull them into a book. I’m letting these go, unread. They may be great books, I don’t know, but they aren’t mine.

Everyone raves over my excerpts and more and more I get told, “You need to write that story.”  I’ve already outlasted the problem of finding a publisher, which I spent way too much time worrying about in the past, a perfect example of my grandmother’s saying, “Don’t borrow trouble.”  It might not be this year, but it will be soon. And others to follow.

2016-05-04 13.00.31

 

And the results? I kept about 11 books. There are several in a shoebox-sized plastic box (not pictured) that are still mold-exposed but I’m not *quite* ready to let them go. Three are commune publications which are research for my writing and hard to find, and two were written by my grandmother, one of my strongest supporters when she was alive.

These keepers live in my closet for now (the cookbook is awaiting a home in the kitchen). The rest are ready for discard.

2016-05-05 17.46.412016-05-04 18.50.43

Marie Kondo talks about not keeping items just as reminders of memories, and how they pull us out of living in the present. I believe it’s not the books themselves we are purging, but parts of ourselves that are no longer serving us. She says that we need to trust we got what we needed when we first read a book, and I was shocked to find how true that is.  My “must keep” pile really was a “mustn’t forget” pile, which is entirely different from “joy sparking”.

I’m not advocating anyone else get rid of all of their books, but for me, it feels like a burden lifted, a freedom I never thought I’d feel. I imagined heartbreak and instead I got reconnection with who I am.

Lisa, 5/6/2016

 

One Comment

  1. Pam:

    I thoroughly enjoyed reading this and your thought process, and before I dive back into books this summer (I probably got rid of 1000 or more last summer), I will want to read this again, because these are all good reminders. Thanks for sharing it.

Leave a comment