So, visiting elderly family members pays off after all. Oh, relax. I'm kidding. My Aunt Kathy is actually one of the spunkiest people I've ever met. With a shrug and a deceptively fiendish smile, she's game for pretty much anything. Ssssshhhh! Please do not tell her about base jumping!
For those of you who are unaware, by the way, personality is actually enhanced by age. We do not just morph into homogeneous beings as we slowly crumble to bones and dust. We are just as varied and dissimilar at seventy as we are at twenty one. This was a great fear of mine growing up. My mischievous soul usually only saw old people as grumpy and severe, though generous at Christmas. This, of course, was not universally true. But after being constantly warned about the dangers of walking on bare feet and reading in the dark and being pressed at every turn to listen to my mother, one tends to develop certain prejudices.
Pay closer attention, and you will see etched in the lines of their faces the story of their lives. Every laugh, every tear, every worry, every triumph - it's all there to read, as clear as an ancient picture story carved in stone. There is an amazing sublime beauty involved in it. Recognizing this beauty, I think, requires an elevated appreciation of life. Most of us, at least in our society which does not venerate age, see wrinkles as we would a computer error, an annoyance to be corrected by either taking it in to get fixed, or by throwing it out and getting a new one. It's not hard to see why. There is a luster in youth, a vibrancy and naivete that is impossible not to love. Living history doesn't quite cut it, either. That would make a person a what? An academic subject? I see them as... harbingers of our futures. Each droopy brow, each grey hair (or missing hair), each knotted knuckle, made our world what it is, for better or worse. And memories are not just things of the past. They are indeed alive, dwelling within us. At 36, I am still 25 in my mind, and I would hope I will always see myself that way!
For the most part, the well-seasoned are simply more definite in their personalities than they were as young whipper-snappers. If she tilted her head when she smiled at a compliment when she was twenty, she probably does the same thing now. If he had a hitch in his laugh when he was thirty, he probably does the same thing now, perhaps even more pronounced.
The only gripe I have with some is the uncanny ability to acquire bitterness over the course of their lives. I would think one would become more appreciative as life goes on of having the privilege of experiencing the full spectrum of life. I wonder if this is just a personality trait. Often I'll see a 22-year old with a slight tendency to be bossy and become quite frightened by the prospects of her in a position of power, let alone the matriarch of a family. Or is it just the tribulations of life that make people forget about the magic that exists around them? Raising unruly children, surviving the death of loved ones, fighting in wars, getting divorced. Maybe it all just takes too much of a toll. I think it still comes down to the well worn axiom that "only the strongest survive." If you are going to keep your lust for life, you had better want to bad enough, or it ain't gonna happen, and those wrinkles will be those of sadness and regret, rather than happiness and tranquility.
So, enough of that. Back to the treasure. And I must preface this by thanking all of those family members who were offered perusal of my Aunt's book collection but failed to do so. What a collection!! She keeps them stacked in a column of boxes in a storage room in a hallway outside her apartment. There are three wire-mesh cages inside the room, and one dainty light. I felt like I was in the cargo hold of a ship, standing amidst a battalion of rusty cages holding gorillas and tigers and other exotic beasts.
She left me in the cargo hold at my request. She had suggested bringing the boxes into her living room so that I would have a more comfortable seating arrangement, but I was fine going indian-style, with the boxes of books arranged in a circle all around me. We propped the door with her trademark black and white floral-print luggage, which I thought to be for the intake of oxygen, until Aunt Kathy informed me that strange noises emanating from a locked storage room would likely provoke a call to the S.W.A.T. team in this senior living facility. How funny!
Okay. I love books. I have enough packed in boxes at home to stock a small library (and one day they will.... one painted dark blue, with a lovely mahogany desk and a bay window for plenty of natural light). I love the sight of them, on a shelf or in a stack, hundreds of thousands of pages, million of words, all condensed into a mirage of small bindings and titles. I love the crease of a book when it has been opened, a shadowy little crevice flanked by perfectly symmetrical mounds of smooth paper (for those of you with sensuous imaginations, yes, the analogy is apt). I love the many fonts of books, the funny titles of books, and I love all the odd assortments of ways to assemble a book.
I read mostly when my heart is recovering from one malady or another. As years go by in the books that I read, so too does time pass between me and whatever was distressing me. A fantastic and relatively harmless drug. And it is indeed addictive! When I am on a reading binge, you cannot find me without a book in my hands. It is on the seat next to me in my Jeep, so that I can read a few sentences at red lights. It is in my hand as I walk from my car to the hotel for work (about fifty feet). It follows me to the bathroom, to the shower, to the gym. When I am away from it for just a few hours, getting back to it consumes me like a young schoolboy in love. Odd, I know.
So, among the treasures I found this day:
1. a collection of essays from Ralph Waldo Emerson
2. John Muir - Travels in Alaska
3. Mark Twain - The Innocents Abroad (published 1911, excellent cond., book cover intact. also stamped with "SPECIAL SERVICE U.S. Army," twice)
4. "How to Draw Funny Pictures": 1928. I imagine this is a book, that if I ever have children, will be pulled from the shelf and dusted off. I will be stoopider that day than usual. Maybe little Johnnie will vow NEVER to do that to his children, forcing them to draw unfunny pictures from an old smelly book written by a dead man.
5. Thomas Mann: Joseph the Provider
6. Floyd Chymer's Historic Motor Scrapbook, Number 2: Cool!!
7. Victor Hugo: Les Miserable (pub. 1897, and given to Mrs. A.W. Payne for Christmas that year
8. Walt Whitman: Leaves of Grass
9. Elbert Hubbard's Scrapbook. Cool!!!
10. The Gold Star Family Album
11. A book called "Scientific Billiards"!!
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