Stepheny Would Want You to Have This Book

One of my favorite stories about my dear friend John, who lives in Charlotte, involves pillows.

After years of taking all the decorative pillows off the bed every night and putting them all back on every morning, John finally came up with a solution. If Tucker died first, John said, he would take all the pillows with him to the service. As people filed past to shake his hand, he would hand each of them a pillow and say, “Tucker would want you to have this.”

That is a funny story.

I worry about what is going to happen to all my books when I cross the River Jordan. Knowing the pillow story, when I begin fretting about it, my daughter assures me she has it covered.

Her plan is to stand there and say, “Stepheny would want you to have this book.”

That is not funny.

I regret nearly every book I have ever parted with because sooner or later I seem to need it again. My bookshelves have become something of an archaeological dig, layers of my reading life, the subjects that once captured me, the authors who stayed, the interests I pursued for years and those that led me somewhere entirely unexpected.

I have long romanticized owning a tiny bookshop, a cat curled up in a patch of sunlight from the window, a comfortable chair nearby, and all my books safely gathered around me in one section. There would be one problem. None of them would be for sale. They could be taken down, opened, admired and perused, but eventually they would have to go back on the shelf.

Perhaps that is why one of my favorite Norman Rockwell images is “Attic Reading.” A father and son have apparently gone into the attic to accomplish something useful, perhaps to clean it out, and instead they are sitting on the floor surrounded by the past, reading.

I understand completely.

That is what happens to me when I go looking for one book on my shelves.

I begin with a purpose. Then I pull out another book I had forgotten about, open it to a page I once marked, remember where I was when I read it, notice the book beside it, and before long I am no longer looking for anything.

I am simply sitting among the layers of my own reading life.