Remodeling Pause

Our books have finally made it to their new home. They had been living in bags – lots and lots of paper grocery bags – but we’ve finally gotten to the stage of settling things into their proper places. May I just say that it’s enough to make you feel human again, to have books upon shelves? And to realize that you have some nice books, books that you’re proud to own, let alone to have read at least once if not several times?

You see, these are the beloved books. These aren’t the books which live upon shelves in the office; these aren’t reference books, but books we have decided are worth reading again and again, and books which can be picked up, caressed. These are what really tell us that we’re home, and well, and make us feel wealthy.

Yes – books make us feel wealthy. It’s strange, until you consider that we’ve had to sell books, and have suffered with their loss. The Riverside Shakespeare, the Riverside Chaucer: they went during the first year of our marriage, when we were living in a one bedroom apartment above somebody’s garage, and were lucky that one of us was working. We lived on spaghetti and jarred sauce; we sold our college texts, because they would get us through the difficult times. We heated the apartment with the electric oven and countless candles, and played cards for hours on end, betting with pretzel sticks. We had a black and white television, with a straightened metal coat-hanger for the aerial. We got all of three channels, one of which was FujiTV.

So, throughout the years, we’ve collected books to replace those beloved ones we sold; the Riversides haven’t made it back into our collection, probably because they sell for hundreds of dollars, and we didn’t like them that much. We look back on that time in our lives, and know that it shaped who we are today. We still love watching Iron Chef – because we watched it on the little black and white set, subtitled in English. We love watching cooking shows in general, because we watched so many on that little set, and we were so hungry at times. Not that we were starving or any such thing – at least, not starving for calories, but for richness, and specialness. To feel wealthy.

So, as we’re remodeling, we’ve pulled back into ourselves. And we’ve been dieting. And our things have been packed away, and we’ve had mess and clutter everywhere. And we’ve had a gimpy heater. So, in some ways, we’ve been waiting for the end, and experiencing a sort of gleeful rebirth as it’s come. I’ve been repeating the phrase, “nobody else has keys to our house” for several weeks now.

And our books are home.

5 Replies to “Remodeling Pause”

  1. Well, as you have the joy of unpacking your books, mine are just going into boxes for a time of storage…sigh.

    (But I’m happy for you!) 🙂

  2. I will do you one better than that Riverside Chaucer. I will drag you to the River. We’ll find Chaucer and whatever other riparian authors on the way…

  3. A lot of our books are packed away and some have been in boxes for about 10 years. I am looking forward to the discovery of which are to be re-read, and which are to be weeded out.

  4. OK, I am trying to figure out what new bookcases to get as I expand the ever growing library into yet another room. Are those IKEA Billy? They look beautiful. I love the glass doors.

    And you are a knitter too. I thought I had your blogs on the blogroll but somehow have missed these. Will rectify immediately.
    Camille

  5. Yep – those are Ikea Billy, and the glass doors are truly wonderful and easy to install. The one trick to building them is to mark the center of the center shelves upon the back, and then to use a string (or the instruction manual) to line up the nails, so that you don’t accidentally go through the shelf when you’re nailing the back on.

    TadMack is also a knitter, ‘though she’s generally too judgmental of her finished pieces to let me post them here.

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