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Blog 6, March

Blog 6

I recently bought one of those of electronic reading gizmos. And I have to say, I think it may regenerate a love of reading—especially with kids who have a passion for punching buttons.

At any rate, this reading gizmo will be to books what the camera was to painting, when photography entered the world some two hundred years ago. The gizmo won’t replace the desire to touch, own and collect books, but it will supplement literacy. I think this devise--which can deliver a book to its screen, via your credit card, quicker than you can sing “Yankee Doodle” was what Jeff Bezos envisioned years ago when he thought up Amazon. So far, he seems to have a monopoly on the electronic book store—but I’m not complaining, for the service is so good. I recommend you try the gizmo, and meanwhile I hope you’ll read one or two my books the old fashioned way.

SPRING CLEANING

I’ve been cleaning out my closets. That’s what we do in the spring—clean up and pay our taxes. Trouble is---my wardrobe is a lazy-woman’s scrapbook. Each piece of clothing is stuck in my memory with a tag: where I wore it, and where I got it. Simply, my memories hang on a rod and not on some page in a book. So, throwing away is devilish hard.

I picked up a dress I wore at my son’s high school graduation. It was navy blue with white dots. I got it at the Gap because my son begged me to look cool. I tried it on. Apparently it had shrunk while hanging in the closet. I gave it a second try by punching a hole in the belt. Then tossed it in the give-away pile.

I pulled out the suede skirt I wore to the Mother-Daughter tea when my daughter was a college senior and wanted me to look like June Cleaver and not the cowgirl I had recently aspired to be. She had made me promise to use a lint brush to wipe off my horse’s white shedded hair—and to also check my shoes for manure before I arrived at the highfalutin tea. Oh, that was years ago. But there were still two hairs from my horse’s coat stuck near the hem.

I also threw into the give-away-pile a shirt my son wore when he was ten. How it got left behind in my closet is anyone’s guess. It was a Hawaiian shirt with wild cartoons of monkeys and coconuts on it. I guess I’d once borrowed it to wear to Las Vegas when I wanted to look like I’d lost my shirt before I got there.

I drove the whole bag of stuff to a consignment store, where I just gave it away. Two Saturdays later, I was at the grocery store buying cleaning supplies. I got in line at the checkout behind a woman who was looking really cool. She wore a navy polka dotted dress. And then I recognized it as MY navy polka dotted dress. The extra hole in the belt gave it away.

Outside in the parking lot, I saw a woman getting into her car with her son, and she was wearing my June Cleaver skirt with two white horse hairs still on it. Her son was sporting a shirt with monkeys and coconuts all over it.

“Hey, that used to be mine, and let me tell you where it’s been!” I almost yelled, wanting to spill all my memories and how special those clothes had been. But over the years, I have learned that it’s never a good idea to look crazy in public or be misinterpreted as rude. Besides, my doing so would have broken the spell.

There’s something really quite wonderful about feeling that connection—seeing parts of my life on other people.