On Losing Books

Between middle school and college, I managed to collect over 400 books. They lined the walls in my bedroom at my mother's house. At one point, I even typed them all up in an excel spreadsheet. I divided them by genre, last name, whether it was a favorite of mine or not...I would attempt to go through them and purge the books that I didn't want. I think the only books that I was eventually able to give up where my Babysitter's Club books.

When I graduated college, I brought the dozens of books I'd collected in classes, the ones I bought for my theses, the ones I found comfort in, the ones I wanted to throw out the window, the ones that made me want to be writer...I piled them onto one bookcase and set sail for graduate school, taking only the ones I needed to survive (like my favorite collection of Stephen Dunn poetry).

When I got back from grad school and moved to Boston, I sent all the new books to my new apartment. I created a new, smaller, collection that followed me to Philadelphia. Once I found a more permanent living situation, I would go get the books. That was the plan.

In the interim, my mom moved. My books (and anything worth keeping from elementary school to college) moved to my father's basement, waiting for my arrival.

I was planning to visit my dad's last weekend, to see him and to also bring back some of the books I'd been thinking about: Sarah Ruhl, Daphne Brooks, William Faulkner... But then Irene changed my plans.

And his basement flooded. Four feet of water rushed in.

While I know it is really no big deal. While I know people have lost houses, cars, schools... Vermont is suffering. Upstate NY is suffering. While I know they are just books, just papers, just photos...all things I haven't looked at in the past few years...While I know this, I still feel like I lost a set of memories, a collection I can't get back. I feel like I lost my best friends, the ones that helped shape who I am today in a way I can't explain.

I can't also ignore the fact that these books, these friends, these memories were lost now. At the beginning of this year off. At the beginning of this trip down the rabbit hole and to a desk with a computer, pen and paper. Just when I would want them most.

Oh well. I didn't have the room for 400 books in my place anyway.