Her books!

Over the years she had collected us, lovingly read us and then stacked us neatly upon her shelf. Every day we placed bets to see which new book would move in to join us in our cozy nook upon each ledge.

They all envied me, her favorite, "The Original Sherlock Holmes", by Conan Doyle. Next to me were other copies of Holmes' books, but I was special. You see, she would pith her mind against the master, gathering the clues, trying to solve the crime before he did. She fancied herself his equal in her fantasies.

There upon the shelves was her world, her books: 'Wuthering Heights', by Emily Bronte, dear confused Scarlett in 'Gone with the winds', scary tales by Alfred Hitchcock, Agatha Christie and Miss Marple, even a few of the escapades of the dapper Poirot. Jane Eyre was there, Poetry by Louise Bennett and Mutabaruka, her famous native poets and her lovely cookbook of Jamaican foods. Maya Angelou, Dan Brown, and a host of famous books like 'Pride and prejudice' filled the shelves to overflowing. There was philosophy, Yoga, psychology, witchcraft, Keats, Freud, Jung, Asimov and Shakespeare.

Yet the new books kept coming.

We loved to watch out for her when she came home from work, or from a date that did not go so well, we could tell her moods, happy, sad, or just hot cocoa and warmth with an old book. She never read the new ones when she was sad, she always chose one of her faithful old friends to comfort her.

That day in early 2018, when her son called, we all became agitated. She was planning to leave us behind. He needed her help to watch the grandkids for a while, he did not trust anyone else with the children. How happy she was to spend some time with the young ones, she had not seen them for a while. Her job was just something to occupy her time, leaving was not a life changing loss. Anyway, she could work evenings where she was going, so no need to worry.

She walked lovingly by us, touching us as if we were her most precious possessions as she bid us goodbye for a while. The apartment had to be given up, so she packed us gently and carefully into boxes and sealed us tightly shut with tapes. I felt suffocated in that box. I hoped to be on a shelf again pretty soon. The U-Haul took us away to storage with all of her other belongings. She promised that she would see us as soon as possible, and we counted the days, sort of.

Days turned into weeks, weeks into months. A year passed and we were kind of losing hope. We had lost our best friend, and she has forgotten all about us.

Just when we were hoping for freedom from our boxed prison...the horrid Pandemic hit like a sucker punch to the face. Me, her favorite book of Holmes stories, deduced that things were not going to bode well for us. I feared that we had become lost, doomed to be scattered hither and asunder, never to see our beloved mother again.

I was right. For even though she called them to make sure that her payments were being made, they insisted that she needed to visit in person. It made no sense. She was paying and they had her number.

Months later she called again, only to be told that her unit had been sold. How dare they. There was a Pandemic, no one was travelling. Her beloved books were her biggest worry, I hope she sued the pants off of them. Yet she was referred to the wording of the contract which she never read. I wonder what happened with the ending of that story.

Meanwhile, we were deemed unworthy of any special treatment by the harried, uncultured, plebeian ruffian who bought us and donated us to a used bookstore. The store chose a few of us and sent the others to the Thrift store. The thrift store threw some of us into the free pile outside the door, here we sat for days on end. Nobody wanted books anymore.

I felt all the indignity of a common book. Me, a classic passed down through the ages. How dare they stick me on a Thrift store shelf. At least I was not in the unwanted pile, I consoled myself.

I sat there for two whole weeks observing a variety of washed and unwashed masses throng back and forth through the store, nobody even glanced at me. I mourned the loss of my mother, I missed her and loathed the state of my existence.

Still, I was free from the box. I began to enjoy watching the people, the little children were my favorites, they ran around the store making their parents chase them. How I wished that I had legs to run away and free myself from this impersonal shelf. I listened to happy people, thankful that they could buy from this type of store when funds were very low, especially now that the virus had made things really bad.

Finally, a studious young man came by, he kept adjusting his glasses and peeking at the books. He saw me and grunted happily, only two dollars, wow, he said. He paid for me and lovingly placed me in his satchel which was hanging from his shoulder.

I knew somehow that I had been saved. My mother's name was written in my pages. Maybe, just maybe, my new owner would find her and let her know that I, at least of all her books, was safe and loved.

I hoped the best for all the other books, lost out there in translation!!!

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