Helping the Homeless

I had a reunion with some old friends this week. I had forgotten about a lot of them, even though they've been homeless, some even living in cardboard boxes. Recently they've been exposed to the abuse of animals and children and I determined to find a better home for them. That their homelessness is the direct result of the birth of my daughter is no excuse for my neglect but it does help to explain. You see, I used to have a wonderful office in my home. I had a big, comfy chair, a place for my computer and, best of all, one whole wall with floor to ceiling bookshelves. It wasn't enough to hold all of my books and I had considered plans to expand across another wall but the birth of my daughter derailed those plans and forced the evacuation of my office. My twin sons took possession of that room and my beloved bookshelves became home to trucks, trains, tools, toys and a significantly younger genre of books.

My books were taken downstairs where they were put onto shelves in the entertainment center, dumped into boxes, stacked on top of other cabinets and generally neglected. Actually, neglect might have been a blessing. Those in the entertainment center became the objects of interest to curious boys and later a curious little girl. That same little girl also found the boxes full of paperbacks under my desk and took joy in pulling them out into a pile on the floor. That's when the other force of destruction entered our basement: bunnies. They are pretty much "ordinary rabbits" which means they love to chew. Fortunately, the book that took the brunt of their destruction was one I won't miss. But when I found an already often read Terry Pratchett on the floor, sans cover, I knew it was time to act.

As I pulled the boxes out and gathered my little library together I found myself remembering little details about the books, the authors, even things that happened in my life when I read the book. And one by one my old friends found new homes. Terry Pratchett, Pearl Buck, JRR Tolkien, Richard Feynman, Douglas Adams, Tom Clancy, Mark Twain, Neil Gaiman, Thomas Hardy, Bill Watterson, Scott Adams, Isaac Asimov, Shakespeare, Ray Bradbury, Earnest Hemingway, Stephen Crane, Gary Larsen, Ayn Rand, Orson Scott Card, Anne McCaffrey, Agatha Christie, Henrik Ibsen, Jules Verne, John Grisham, Gregory Maguire, H.G. Wells, Carl Sagan, Richard Adams, D.H. Lawrence, Amy Tan, Berke Breathed, Tennessee Williams, Michael Crichton, Chaim Potok, Stephen Hawking, etc, etc, etc. It was a struggle not to pause at nearly every book and read a paragraph, a page, or a chapter, but it took me years to read them all once (or twice, or several times for a few of them) and I needed to get them situated in one day. I even found a few that I haven't read but had put into my "to read" pile and never quite got around to them. At the end of the day I feel much better knowing all of these friends from my youth are in better accommodations and I have resolved to spend some quality time with each and every one of them over the next few years. I might even take a few of them to bed.