Hooked

From the vantage of the back seat, my sisters and I could immediately tell when we were in danger.  In the rearview mirror, Mom’s eyes would get a wild look in them; she’d hum a little under her breath; drum her fingers innocently on the steering wheel.  But we knew.  Oh, we always knew.

It was the turn signal that confirmed it.

“Mooooomm!” 

“Oh, just for a couple of minutes.”

The three of us would stagger out of the back seat of the station wagon; toe the asphalt with the white rubber tips of our tennis shoes; drag our feet, sighing exaggeratedly all the way to the entrance.

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Book Sale

At nine o’clock this morning, the library book sale began.  This was the big sale; the hardback sale; the sale around which we had planned our vacation to Maine.  My husband even came along even though he was certain that he wouldn’t find a thing.

Last year, the kids and I just happened upon the sale, in one of its final days.  There were a few people here and there in the community room; balancing a stack in one arm while considering another book.  A man glanced at my arms. 

“That’s why I bring this.”  He pointed to his backpack, bursting with books.  “Holds more and keeps my arms free.” 

I smiled and picked up Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies.  I studied the back.  Would I really read it?

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Curb on Trust

There’s a bookstore close by my house.  It’s a huge bookstore, with a separate section just for movies and music, and when you go in, you’re immediately accosted by the sole employee who never appears to have anything to do.

 “May I help you?”

“No thanks.  Just looking.”

But this employee won’t leave you to look.  Instead, she—most often it’s a young woman—will lean on the counter, staring at you, occasionally walking behind you, hands clasped nonchalantly behind her back, as she watches to ensure you aren’t stuffing videos down your shirt.

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By Heart

This post was written in response to a prompt from the red dress club: asking us what we learned by heart in childhood.

To know something by heart is to love it so much that you hold it within your heart forever.  Growing up, I knew by heart our community bookmobile.  Every two weeks the bookmobile would round the bend in the road and toot the horn a couple of times before parking at the side of the road in front of my neighbors’ house.  I would go to my jewelry box and grab my library card; thick salmon cardboard with a piece of metal affixed to it.  I loved everything about this card: the raised letters of my card number; my shaky yet solemn signature; the little plastic sleeve it lived in between bookmobile visits.  My library card was my license to travel. 

Mom would give us the go-ahead, and my sisters and I would race out the door and down the hill.  There were three bushes—small, medium and large—separating our property from the neighbors’ place.  I ignored them, running between them and on to the lawn next door. 

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