To the Bookstore

You visited your first bookstore and this brings us much joy. Your eyes were closed for most of it, but still—you were among the walls of shelves and the many bookcases and the piles of books on tables. As we wheeled you up and down the rows of fiction, I hoped you might smell the pages. I hoped you might feel the hum and buzz of all those words and thoughts, so electric in the air. Your mother and I perused and wandered, enchanted. We filled our arms with books. We brought them all to a table. Mom got a coffee from the café and we read while you dozed in your stroller. We took in the first words of each story and made hard choices and daydreamed about summer reading plans. We stayed an hour or more. Sometimes you smiled in your sleep. At last we left, with Elizabeth Strout and Grace D. Li and Una Mannion and Elena Ferrante and Taylor Jenkins Reid. It’s not that we don’t have enough books at home—we do, and then some. But there’s something about choosing new books for a summer just unfolding. Carrying them through the front door after an afternoon out, feeling their heft, their promise, their allure, and setting them down gently on the table by the couch. A book is a journey, an escape, an education, a meditation. It offers a chance to encounter beauty, to peer into yourself, to expand your world. It offers a chance to revel in artistry and story and character and place, and the pleasure of knowing you carved out a moment in your day to simply read. For me and for your mom, books are a way of living.  

The next morning we woke up and mom made a big pot of coffee and I cooked her a butternut squash avocado omelette and we lay feet to feet on the couch and read our new books. Apricot sprawled on my lap and you stretched out in the baby lounger on the coffee table next to us. That morning you turned 12 weeks old and you weighed eleven pounds. You’ve been smiling more than ever before. Your coos have been sweetly melodic. It was the Sunday of a long weekend and it was a great new day.