Other than animals, I’d say growing up my best friends were books.  Both of my parents loved to read.  Daddy read Dale Carnegie and Mama read murder mysteries.  My guilty pleasure has always been historical romance.  Burk prefers biographies.  Maris loves all her books, especially Anatole the mouse and Madeline.  Our family is not satisfied with merely browsing in a bookstore.  We all get drawn into its literary delights; the dichotomy of time standing still and yet time being transported.

“Oh, I just want what we all want:  a comfortable couch, a nice beverage, a weekend of no distractions and a book that will stop time, lift me out of my quotidian existence and alter my thinking forever.” ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, “Eat, Pray, Love”

Reluctantly the time had come to leave but we each walked away clutching our newest finds.  For Burk it was “Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates”, for me it was “Mary, The Most Powerful Woman in the World”, and Maris got the most darling book called “In the Forest”.  My parents taught me books were to be cherished and that is what we are instilling in our daughter.  Books are treasure troves in and of themselves; they are knowledge, they are escape, they are recollections, they are adventure, they are history and so much more.  As much as I adore my iPhone and have great concern over the conservation of trees, I hope there will always be books to hold and to smell.  There is a comfort in the rustle of a turning page, the soft “whump” when a book closes, and its reassuring weight as it slips out of sleepy hands and onto a chest.  Even the cats love scratching a cheek or two on its edges.  Each of our bookshelves will now have a new gem to house.  And with that I shall close this chapter in my blog and crack open my book.