the books we keep
Walking past the bookcase, you run your fingers along the spines of old-book friends. You pull one off the shelf and page through it slowly — reading a snippet here, pausing over a sentence there, and drinking in the familiar illustrations. The ones you’ve looked at so many times you practically have them memorized.
This bookcase might hold beautiful antique books, personal favorites you haven’t actually read in years, picture books from childhood, or a mix of all these. But whichever book it is, you take one out every time you walk past. Just to sit with it. To flip through the pages and let that familiar bookish stillness wash over you, even if only for a minute or two.
Do you remember the books you loved when you were little? Maybe you even still have some, or all, of them.
They contained entire worlds in a scant few pages, didn’t they? The coziest of little houses. Talking animals having tea in the tiniest of foraged teapots. Forests, meadows, and villages-under-the-hedges that you wanted to crawl inside and live in.
When we were little, those stories felt real. And we entered those worlds so easily, and so often, that when we flip through those old-favorite books now, they have the worn-in, comfortable feeling of beloved places we’ve actually been.
In a world that only gets buzzier and faster with each passing year, these physical reminders of a quieter time, a gentler season, become increasingly harder to find. And their rarity is one of the things that makes them worth holding onto.
Some of us find ourselves reaching back toward the feeling of that quieter time — toward who we were before the world sped up — in whatever ways we can.
Creating things by hand, like our grandmothers did.
Baking something from a family recipe.
Displaying a few cherished knick-knacks on the bookshelf.
Writing letters to friends, on the good stationery.
Re-reading our favorite children’s books.
Making sure our sense of wonder is still within easy reach.
And if you don’t actually have a book in your hands at the moment? The bookcase is patient. It knows you’ll be back.
