Volumes of Memory

Everyone has certain sights or objects and strongly remind them of the past. The other night, having just got in to my mother's house, I stepped into the library in order to give MrsDarwin a quick call and catch up on doings back in Ohio. Pacing around while talking I was realizing what a strong visual memory I have for my parents books.

The present house is not one I ever lived in -- my mother moved here after my father died in order to be near her parents -- and so the layout of the library is different. And yet, the books are the same. A number I've read, but far more I have not. Yet even among those books I'd never taken down from the shelf there is an intense familiarity to the books which I saw on the shelves throughout my childhood. The "old books" all showed as familiar faces while newer acquisitions jumped out as unfamiliar. I could probably sort the whole library into books acquired in the last ten years and those acquired before with a fair amount of accuracy. And likewise with the non book inhabitants of the shelves. Thomas the blue china elephant looks down with a familiar smile, and the enigmatic saxaphone playing frog hides on a lower shelf. But the miniature mounted globe is unfamiliar.