Bookstore musings

We like bookstores, my husband and I. Our kids aren’t so enamored. They associate them with long waits in dark corners reading tales they’ll never finish while their parents disappear. These days we go without them.

Last weekend I left my husband in the history section. I wasn’t really planning on buying anything—still feeling guilty from spending money trying to publish my own words. But I saw the computer with its “new search?” logo and wondered, well, maybe they’d have something I’d been looking for.

Not that I knew what I was looking for. The name that came to mind was “The Scent of God,” I think because the scent of books was thick and the time spent wandering and worrying could better be spent in prayer. It’s a book I’d consistently failed to find, since the day I first met Beryl Singleton Bissel on Gather, and one I really hoped to read one day.

Much to my surprise, the computer declared they really had a copy. I scurried off to find it. And since my husband was still engrossed in history, I did my usual trick of opening to a random page. There I saw another book referenced, Kathleen Norris’s The Cloister Walk, which someone at church had long since recommended to me. So I wandered back to the machine and typed in another search. Two copies. Okay.

And sitting between the two copies on the shelf was Stalking the Divine by Kristin Ohlson. I’d started reading that a while ago, in dark corners of this self-same bookstore while my husband disappeared in history. Was it a sign?

He bought two books and I bought three.

So yes, this is a busy week. My youngest son is researching and applying to MFA programs; I get to take notes. He has his driving test tomorrow, so we go out to practice. And his sandals and belt broke on his last vacation so we’ve even had a son-and-mother shopping expedition. He wants a haircut. He needs cash. And we’re taking him back to college Labor Day weekend so I’ve got planning to do for that too. But in snatched corners of time, between rice beginning to boil and sauce to thicken, between washing’s gurgling rush and dryer’s roar, between heating of the kettle and brewing of the tea… the books have wandered round the house with me and sustained me better than food and chocolate and coffee, and reminded me to pray.

Yes, I think it might have been a sign. I’ve really enjoyed all three of my purchases and I look around now at my mixed up, mixing up life, where really there’s not so much wrong and I really should be glad, and I remember to be glad.

Thank you God. Thank you Beryl and Kathleen and Kristin.

Now it’s time to go and walk my neighbor’s dog.

Thursday writing essentials asked us to write about notable figures and their effect on the world, but sometimes it's the hardly noticed impacting the hardly noticed, who change the eyes through which we see the world.