ROSH HASHANAH 5785 SECTION D, PAGE 23
We are proudly called the People of the Book. I, alas, am also a person, make that a compulsive keeper, of record albums, scrapbooks, and theater playbills. If my bookshelves could speak, they would moan, groan and shout “Dayenu” — but not in a reverential way.
In my last home, my library gloriously covered an entire wall, floor to ceiling. It embraced all my books, records, photo albums, show programs and miscellaneous whatnots. It was a bibliophile’s dream. However, since moving to a new town and a new house, my centralized collections system has broken down.
My new office library is smaller. My beloved possessions are crammed into a smaller bookcase. Some are even located in another room. It’s a travesty. An affront to my sense of organization and to my heart. As if my family has been torn apart.
You see, these items aren’t simply a hoarder’s bounty. They are the sentimental substitute for loved ones long gone and the days when my empty nest was filled with children’s laughter and chatter.
The playbills, for example, aren’t just keepsakes from the shows I loved. Many belonged to my parents, mementos of Broadway performances from the 1940s. So cherished were these keepsakes that my mother had them bound into expensive leather books and embossed with gold-gilt lettering.
For me, they reflect a shared love of live performance and music shared by my parents. my brothers, me and my children. I look up at them from my desk and recall tales of my cigar-chomping, tender-hearted father seeing West Side Story three times, my brother meeting Leonard Bernstein, and my children attending their first show.
It’s much the same story with my books. They aren’t inanimate objects; they’re friends. Just like the family scrapbooks, they’re loaded with memories. I may not always remember a story’s plot, but I can almost always tell you where I bought the book, when I read it and how it affected me.
Even though I no longer possess a record player, I zealously cling to my record albums for the memories they evoke.
Add in the 30 or so scrapbooks I possess, and you get a pretty good picture of overloaded bookshelves, sagging and screaming for mercy. Yes, my bookshelves carry a lot of weighty emotional baggage!
For months, I have been lamenting loudly about my desperate need for more bookshelf space.
And so, one sunny afternoon, my sweet, well-meaning husband leaped into action, seeking a solution to my woes and a little quiet from my constant kvetching.
He eyeballed the shelves and opined, “You have a lot of wasted space.”
Now, if he had said I looked old or fat or almost anything else, I could and would have responded immediately with some clever or nasty retort. But to attack the sacred ordering and content of my bookcase? Well, that was a hit way below the emotional belt.
On a roll, Mr. Helpful didn’t stop.
“Why don’t we box up the record albums and store them?”
“How about putting the children’s books in the downstairs bookcase?”
“What about the scrapbooks? They could go someplace else, couldn’t they?”
I was speechless. Stunned.
Instead, I did what I do best — I sulked and stewed. But on my own I launched a determined online quest for the perfect new bookcase to provide shelf space salvation.
Yet, like Goldilocks, I struggled. All the bookcases I saw were too tall, too wide or way too expensive.
It took three weeks of nightly Internet searches but finally I found “it” — the bookcase of my dreams. I ordered it for my bedroom. It is now the home for the constant stream of “new” books I order, which obviously have yet to earn a sentimental spot on the “main” bookcase. And by removing the shelf of “Books to Read” from the office library to the bedroom freed up some space.
Giving the devil his due, I even followed one bit of my husband’s advice. I moved the record albums downstairs, which freed up a lot of space. It hit a sour note, but it made sense. Even sentimental me had to say, “Dayenu.”
Sometimes a person of the books, records and such must sacrifice sentiment for space. I mean could we have schlepped through the desert carrying everything? Of course not. We are a practical people, too!
