Books are Timeless

The Past

A couple of years ago, my Dad came to visit me and the children for the first time in nearly twelve months. He hadn’t seen my new house since I’d built it the previous year and I still had lots to do, like build new bookshelves for my office.

They came in an Ikea flat pack, so it was straightforward enough to build them. Dad held the shelves and I hammered.

This kind of job always takes longer than I expect. And this time was no exception. Not least because I decided to clean all the books and arrange them by colour to make them look pretty (oh yes I do!)

And then I started opening them and looking inside.

Memories

I picked up a book called Modern World which my school friend Mary-Claire gave me for my eighteenth birthday. It felt familiar in my hands and I’d loved it because it was all about Modern Writers. Now it felt more prevalent because MC had already passed away.

She’d died from MS while she was only in her 30s. I couldn’t make it to England for the funeral but I’d visited her grave later. I’d sat on the grass, leaned on her headstone and wept my heart out.

I thought about the time we’d gone out with twins, and how we’d got into trouble for staying the night in London without permission…it felt like it could have been yesterday. But my childhood friend was already long gone.

Then I picked up a book from the Guggenheim Museum which I’d visited with my Mum on a trip to New York more than 20 years ago. I’d been working for a company at the time (the only time I’ve ever been an employee) and it was the first time I was able to afford to take my Mum on holiday.

So we flew to New York for five days of sight-seeing and shopping. We went to the top of the Twin Towers and out to Ellis Island to trace the names of Irish ancestors on the walls…and the book brought it all back.

The Bloody Chamber

I opened The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter which I hadn’t read in nearly thirty years. The smell of paper wafted up and I stuck my nose in and inhaled. My eyes flew across the page and I remembered being in my bedroom back in England when I was nineteen or twenty.

I was home from university and cosy in bed, just lying there with my nose stuck in the book and the North Staffs hills framed through the window…

I picked up a hardback book of poems by the Bronte Sisters. Dad bought it for me as he did so many of my books. We drove up to Yorkshire in my old Beetle to visit the Bronte homestead of Haworth on my birthday. I couldn’t date it exactly but it must have been in the early 90s.

It was a difficult time because Dad had gone bankrupt and my parents were getting divorced. He was moving back in with my Granny.

I leafed through the pages and relived walking through the small rooms of the rectory house where those sisters had written books we still read today. They spun them out of their imaginations and wrote them by hand between walks on the moors.

The house looked the same as it did when they lived there two hundred years ago. Walking through it felt magical, like I’d been transported in time.

Special Power

Back in the present, my Dad interrupted my reverie. 

‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

‘Yes please.’ Bookshelf organising is thirsty work.

I stared at the collection on those shelves. It looked like a colour-coordinated biography of my life. I put the book of poems on its new shelf and had tea and chats with Dad.

But I couldn’t stop thinking…

Time passes and it’s just a collection of books, right? Some pages with words on, between two covers. Sitting slim and quiet on a shelf for twenty or thirty years.

Except it’s not that. It’s so much more.

The Present

It’s multiple worlds and lifetimes and visions and memories. The writer’s, the story’s, and mine. And not just in the past, but in the present and stretching out ito the future, too. My life feels measured by those books. They give me something tangible to hold onto.

And I look at my kids and feel a bit bewildered because suddenly they’re very grown up, and my daughter Andrea is about to start university. She’s the same age I was when I grabbed The Bloody Chamber off a shelf probably in Waterstones in Manchester. 

That book shouted at me from the rafters then. It changed my perspective of the world. As did Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. Those books shaped my thinking and although they’re not modern now they’re not out of date, either.

They’re still current. They still hold power.

And that’s what I’m thinking now. In spite of so much change, books feel timeless…

Future meets Past

Fast forward two years and my Dad has been really sick. He’s had four heart attacks, three stents and a lot of new medication to get used to.

He sent me a family photo from the late 1950s which my Uncle had digitally enhanced.

There’s my Granny and Grandpa, my Dad sitting behind Gran, and his brothers and sister on either side. It was taken a short while before my Grandpa died.

I noticed a watch on Gran’s wrist and zoomed in. It was an Omega with a black strap. I recognised it because when she died, I got it. She loved giving watches as presents and it reminded me so much of her.

 

I ran upstairs and took it out of my jewellery box. It looked exactly the same as it did on Gran in the photo more than sixty years ago.

I sat on the edge of my unmade bed, put it on and wound it up. I held my wrist to my ear to check if it was still working. I imagined my grandmother doing the same thing when she got up on the morning that photo was taken. 

The watch ticked, and it felt reassuring. It ticked on my grandmother’s wrist and now it ticks on mine. Like the books, it feels timeless.

My Dad is turning eighty soon, and we’re having a party to celebrate. But now he needs to have a defibrillator fitted and it’s just another reminder that unlike books and watches, none of us are timeless…

A Kind of Magic

I’m not sure how I’ll manage when that time comes. At least I’ll always have the books to hold in my hands, to see and smell and give me comfort. They’ll always connect me to all the beautiful souls who pass through my life.

I hold my wrist to my ear now, and listen to that tiny ticking sound. And I re-read the words of those writers and I think about the souls who gifted them to me, and how they live on in my heart.