January 25, 2018
The Birds of America
I'm closing in on the last of the library decisions. Most of the books still on the shelves are ones with real meaning to me, and are worth paying to store for the next five years so that I can savor them again once we resettle. but what about this weighty tome, the largest remaining book on the shelves? How much do I care about it?
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I ask Rachael, after explaining how much I loved it as a child. I was enamoured by Audobon's drawings, and would make my own drawings from his using tracing paper. It was a contributor to my lifelong appreciation for the birdlife of the world. It touches me to leaf through it again, looking at old favorites, and seeing with sorrow that at the time it went to print the ivory billed woodpecker was still a presence in the world. It saddens me also to realize there’s no one in the family after me who would appreciate it - there just aren’t as many bird enthusiasts any more, maybe because there aren’t that many birds in America any more.
Rachael is sympathetic, but thinks it should go. It's just too big. I should take a few pictures for the archive project, and send it out the door. I tentatively agree but then open it again, looking inside the cover. I'd forgotten that dad gave it to me when he and mom were going through their own downsizing experience, selling their beloved home on Magnolia Bluff to move into an assisted living condo unit. It was his as a child, and still has his boyhood label from his and my grandmother's home in Charleston. It reminds me of grandma's apartment, something I haven't pictured in a long time. I place it back on the shelf, and find six other titles I care less about to dispose of instead.
And if that gets to stay, we might as well find room for this also: framed photos of two birds from the Peterson Field Guides. Dad put this together for me when I was a child back in West Virginia, and it decorated my bedroom wall until I moved off to college.
On a related note, there's this painting that's been in our hall closet for years:
This is another family relic that came down to me at the same time as The Birds of America did, when my folks were downsizing. This one holds a lot of memories for me also. Mom painted it, sometime back about when I was in Junior High - I forget now, but I think it was a school project from when she went back to school to get her art degree. It hung on the wall of our home for the last years I was living there. It seems like a natural for the Archive - it photographs well, and we never see it as it is since it's been buried in a closet for the last twenty years. Again, Rachael reasonably suggests we could part with it.
I ask my sister Elizabeth for a second opinion. Keep it, she advises. She's right, of course. Whatever was I thinking?
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6 years ago
6 years ago
6 years ago
You can never have too many books-only too little space.
Good luck with the downsizing, Scott.
Cheers Ken Nicholson
6 years ago