Bookmarks

The first day of Spring happened three days ago, and so did another beautiful white snow. It was the same snow that came at Christmas time. The same snow that came after you left us. I wonder why Spring's arrival was cloaked in such a cold blanket? Maybe it was to remind me that you will be with me always; through Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter. I don't want to feel like I am moving away from you. Sometimes I do feel this way.
Today it was Spring again.
Your Daddy and I went into an old bookstore today while your Sister was in school. We had never gone into it before, though we had walked by it hundreds of times. Today we entered the open door, it was letting fresh air in to dust the jackets of volumes that may or may not have ever been read. Stacks and piles surrounded us, there were pathways to Ancient Greece and blockades of Dickens. Shakespeare's tragedies cascaded from rickety shelves of yesteryear. There were histories and Materia de Medica, botanicals and anthologies. Robert Burns battled with Anais Nin for shelf-space. Rudyard Kipling, Eugene Field and Edmund Spenser all wound up their tales into a spiral on an abandoned dresser. I searched the spines for Lady of the Lake. I had lost a beautiful copy owned by my Great-Grandmother years ago at an auction. The man who won the bid wouldn't sell it to me. He didn't care that it belonged to me through blood. I look for copies of it whenever I am around old books. The most common publishing dates on the books I explored today were such years as 1901, 1898, 1923, and 1888. I love reading these dates. I love wondering whose eyes carressed the pages and found themselves walking through the stories. People I will never know. But I feel like if I read their book, the same book that they first cracked open in 1918, why then I have entered their world. I have shared an experience with someone long dead. I wonder to myself "who was the last person to touch this book before me? Was it their favorite story? Were they like me?" And then I wonder if I set the book down will I be the last one to touch it for years in these dusty catacombs. Who will find the book where I left it? Will they pick it up and learn from it who they are? Questions that the books make me ponder. Imaginings that the books make me create. Pretending is what fiction is all about, right?
The book I cherish the most is the book I've written of you, Frost. This book rests on a beautiful shelf in my heart. There is no dust upon its cover because I take it out daily and read it to myself and to any who will listen. To find it where I left it, all one has to do look for a late snow on the first day of Spring and wait for the thaw to melt the cage around the Robin's voice. Their song is our song. I'm listening to Spring.
Night, night Frost
Mama loves you.