Tag Archives: life in the slow lane

Bookstore? What bookstore?

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Ever have one of THOSE weeks?

This week, returning from Istanbul and diving into wrapping up the semester at the college, I have logged less than three hours working in the bookstore. My loving spouse has been carrying the place solo as I careen from car to class to meeting to car, stopping only to fling my body horizontal in a darkened room for five hours at a time.

Yeah, it’s a first world problem. I’m playing catchup partly because I got to spend twelve days meandering the streets of Old and New Istanbul, hand in hand with my beloved. And when we got home, shopsitters Mark and Sally had left the place immaculate and organized.

That was Monday…. by Tuesday evening 12 big boxes of trade-ins sat on our bookshop floor. Clearly, some customers had been waiting for us to return.

My amazing husband was on his hands and knees in the back of the store last night, triaging the last of the paperbacks. I patted him on the shoulder as I raced past. Modern marriages are wonderful things.

And yet, in the midst of the chaos, beneath the burden of all that must  be done, there is a weight that doesn’t so much push down as hold up.

Wednesday past, as I turned out the light much later than I wanted to in preparation for climbing the stairs to bed, I stood for a few moments in our dark, calm bookstore. The walls were lined with books, silent sentinels of so many lives. Testimony that many had gone before, and survived, thrived, even recorded their journeys.

And I breathed. That smell, that lovely smell of dust and ideas–and lemon scent; our cleaner Heather is amazing–worked its way into my rapid-fire lungs. And I slowed down a little.

Just for three minutes, I stood, breathing. Just breathing. This too shall pass, this present cloud of bustle. Busy ends of the semester will return to summer beach readers and long, leisurely glasses of iced tea–or cups of hot tea–with customers who are friends, stopping by to ask about titles, offer reviews, show us their child’s report card.

It’s a good thing to have the weight of books in one’s life. Then I climbed the stairs to the bedroom, where on the left side of the bed a lump lay. The other anchor to my life, Jack, snored softly. Just breathing.

Fast food, furious grading, fast driving, faster meetings and all, I have the most wonderful life.

Don’t Look a Gift Potato in the Eye

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I was gardening out front of the shop when one of our favorite customers pulled up. IMG_4190

“H’lo, dear!” Ms. X waved a hank of fuzzy cloth. “I was yard sale-ing and found this jacket and said, ‘This looks like Wendy.'”

Hence the favorite thing. Not only does she do nice stuff like this all the time, she’s always right. I liked the pretty jacket instantly. Cost her 50 cents, which she did not want back.

Ms. X is one of many people around here who takes life by the horns that tried to gore her, and headbutts it. She and her son, both chronically ill, have no insurance; he has a crappy job. They live carefully in a house that labels them legally homeless, frugal to a fault with secondhand sales, day old baked goods, and the daily, considered creativity of what’s for supper. They don’t fish or garden for fun. But they have fun fishing and gardening.

“They’s sweet potatoes in Appalachia,” Ms. X winked as she departed, a couple of value paperbacks under one arm.

That’s not some mysterious Southern code. About every six months, in a little town two miles over, some person or persons unknown dumps produce under an abandoned gas station’s awning. Word of mouth goes out, and those as want it, go get it. Often it’s sweet potatoes, sometimes bananas. (When that happens, banana bread becomes currency and Huddle House runs a month-long “banana breakfast biscuit” special.) Rumor says once “the dump” was Hershey bars.

quick get in!I’d never availed myself of “the dump” before but my friend Elissa’s dogs LOVE sweet potato treats. Knowing she was busy helping another friend run a yard sale, in a fit of mischievous humor I grabbed a tea cozy, the back scratcher we use to turn off the kitchen light, and a role of tp. Racing to the sale field, I leaped from my car and shouted to Elissa, “QUICK, GET IN! I’LL EXPLAIN AS WE DRIVE!”

I probably should have remembered that Elissa is a news photographer. While everyone else stared, dumbfounded, with a swift flick of the wrist she held up her cell phone and snapped. And now I’m a meme on the Internet.

At the dump we got two bags for Elissa’s rescue dachshunds–who will waddle through this week in plump yam repleteness–and a bag each for friends we knew were busy. I asked Elissa, born and raised here, about the dump’s origins and she said rumor suggested some wealthy individual who’d made good elsewhere did it for his hometown. No one knows who, or why. And no one really questions. Why look a gift potato in the eye?

I imagine sweet Ms. X and her son sitting down to buttered baked yams, she saying, “…and for breakfast tomorrow there’ll be fresh sweet potato muffins.” On the counter sits a steaming potato casserole she’ll be taking to the church social.

Go by, mad world.