STUFFIT BOOKS

Oh no! Sarah really knows how to hurt a person.

After asking me what to do about Spring Housekeeping
and STUFF, she just had to come back with what to do
about books. All those books we collect over the years.

I almost cried. My Hives suddenly all popped out. My
heart almost came to standstill. She never said anything
about books.

Ohhhh...be still my heart.

Books, I replied, are STUFF. We love them, we treasure
them, they become a lot of who we are as human beings.
They form a large part of our personality: they make an
immediate statement about who we are.

Yes, I had 10,00+ books. They were everywhere. On shelves,
on tables, on chairs, on floors, I was drowning in books!
I had lovingly collected every book I'd ever owned, from
childhood onwards. Hardcover books. Expensive books. My
libarary of memories. I loved those books. Every single one
of them.

Get rid of them? May as well ask me to cut off my right arm.
Or worse, go running naked through the streets in my birthday
suit. Exposed! What can be more vulnerable than that? Oye.

Came the day I was seriously contemplating moving far, far
away. With my precious library all intact. I called the movers
to come in and give me an estimate. That was sobering.

The left me with their Estimate. I read it, carefully. The
bottom line? Cost just to move the library: four-thousand dolars.
($4,000.00)

Do I look like Donald Trump's wife?

Let him move all my books.

I sat down hard, gulped, choking back tears, I started dialing
phone numbers. "Where could I send all my books so that they all
ended up being together, keeping each other company as they had
me all those years." I didn't want a single one of them alone.
They either had to go all together or not at all.

Sounds easy enough, after a week of conversations with schools,
libraries, universities, anybody who had libraries and who would
benefit most from getting 10,000+ hardcover books, not just any
ole books either.

I had First Edition books, books signed by their authors, a first
edition of Winnie the Pooh and Christopher Robin in mint condition,
antiquarian books, books on just about every subject from aardvark
to zoology, all in excellent condition.

I grew weaker with each exercize. So many phone calls. It grew
more complicated each and every phone call. So many questions being
asked. I'm not a librarian I kept saying. Either you want them, or
you don't.

It was painful.

Not wanting to keep you in suspence, the end of the story is nigh.

Nobody, but nobody, wanted my old books. And the things I'd have to
do was unspeakable. In a moment of inspiration I called the last
number on my list: The Montreal Institute for the Blind. I knew
that the school was for children from kindergarten all the way
through university. Perfect. I spoke with the Director. He was
thrilled. He'd send somebody to pick up the books as soon as
possible.

He did, true to his word. A little old man showed up in a van.
He knocked on the door and said he was there to collect books.

When he saw all those boxes, he nearly fainted. "They said that
I was going to pick some books. They didn't say that there are
a hundred boxes of books."

"Oh, so sorry."

He said that he'd have to come back with a moving truck.