Hobbies

March 17, 2021

Mom never had expensive hobbies. She was a voracious reader and counted the library as one of societies greatest gifts. We regularly visited two local libraries but occasionally visited even more. To be able to read a book without paying for it was a treat to be savored and one we seldom passed up.

For who is too busy to read?

Mom had a broad range of knowledge and I credit that to her appetite for books. She did not care for the sciences but she still had a general knowledge and could hold her own in a conversation on most any subject. That’s not to say it wouldn’t bore her but she was never isolated by knowing nothing of a subject.

When we lived in Miamisburg she had my grandfather build her bookcases and it didn’t take her long to fill them. They both held a spot in our living room and were a focal point of her life. When we moved to Pinehaven we found three built-in bookcases, floor-to-ceiling designs – and they might have been one of the reasons we bought the place.

One was in her bedroom, one was in mine and one was in the living room.

Throughout her life I’d often hear her say she bought a book “to read in my old age”. I think she managed to get through all of them. In her final year her eyes were a problem and she had even considered talking books. But I am happy it never came to that, not because they are not useful but because part of the joy of a book is holding it in your hand and scanning the page at your own pace.

When the bookcases filled up, she’d make room for new ones by weeding out the oldest, the ones she retained less interest in, or those she read and did not enjoy as much as she had hoped. Library books, of course, were always available for another read.

Likewise we enjoyed the newspaper but dropped it many years ago when delivery was a problem. For what use is a newspaper when not yet delivered? A newspaper with Sunday breakfast has lost its taste when it’s delivered in the early afternoon.

When Mom was a little girl she said one of her goals was to be a writer. But she found the words wouldn’t come when a blank sheet of paper stared up at her. She was meant to write, I am sure, but the fuse, once lit, failed to burn long.

Yet she was a successful writer of her own journals. Even in her final year, when her eyesight prevented much reading, she scratched daily notes in her journal. Through the years, as both of us would finish a journal, I’d bring it upstairs and stack it inside a cedar chest. Thus the words even took on a healthy scent.

That final 2017 journal was not one I’d been able to read until recently. I noted her death date after her final entry but then I carefully stored the journal away, not to be seen again for several years. But recently I became curious and held it again in my hands to see what words she might give me from the grave.

I received a number of compliments and thanks in those final pages, even though I’ve felt guilty that my care was perhaps less than she needed. She allayed those fears by telling me she appreciated what I did for her: the meals, the trips to the bathroom, sleeping near her on the living room floor for many nights so that I could hear her if she needed me. I felt the appreciation then but I loved seeing it in print, directed at me alone.

Similarly she left notes in the books she read. One in particular thanked me for the wonderful life I gave her. I don’t feel as though I gave enough. But I cannot say I didn’t try.

Books were her time machine and they freed her from a sometimes mundane world. She never traveled in person but she held the world in her books.

As a child her family owned one book: a Lincoln Library. When I was younger she’d point out things she’d learned in it. Soon enough I owned an entire encyclopedia and had moved on to other books. But Mom always smiled when she mentioned that one book, surely the source of many school-time projects.

Though she had an electronic tablet in later years, she never cottoned to it like a book. She never used it as a book. She preferred print, something she could hold in her hands, slowly turn the pages, feel the texture beneath the words. Electronics may have been convenient and held vast amounts of information at her fingertips, but it was always a real book she sought.

She liked to work crosswords every day. She kept a dictionary beside her chair. She even kept an atlas nearby. Places mattered, too, and she could only visualize placement with a map.

She loved writing letters … and getting them. She had many pen-pals. She wanted stationery, and pretty envelopes and smooth-writing pens. Email held no interest for her. In her final years she lamented the fact that she got so few letters. Most everyone she knew was dead.

But for every book she read she knew the written word conquered death. We really could leave our thoughts behind. Just as she knew others had done it, so did she.

I place my hand where her hand warmed the page with her palm. I feel the residual heat.