Turning the Page
By Barb H
Donating four boxes of books last summer was liposuction for my loft shelves, and for the pretender I’ve portrayed through an array of titles, colors, and genres. Books as good intentions mixed with others that looked good on my shelf. Every book passed through my fingers as I sorted them. Some were well-loved, dog-eared, and annotated. Several took me back a decade or more, to college years, or to the face of someone I felt I was disappointing by passing on a gift they’d chosen just for me. But one by one, I held a book for a moment, reflected, then set it aside. I mustered mindful detachment to classify each one: Keeping, Evicting, or Not sure, need to revisit.
Layers of pretense peeled off with each book that had overstayed its welcome, taking up space like unspoken loss and uneasy memories.
Being Mortal; The Odyssey; Moby-Dick; My Sister’s Keeper; The Outsiders; Night; Radio Silence; The Big Short; The Grieving Brain; How to Lose Friends and Alienate People; The Search for Significance; Necessary Losses; We Die Alone.
The stack of titles read like an adoption memoir table of contents.
Everyone should move, or move all the furniture out of a room, every decade or so. When we moved from our sons’ childhood home ten years ago, I discovered the organized hoarder I’d become, clinging to nostalgia, grasping for connection. Clearly labeled containers of whatnot filled a myriad of shelves accumulated over twenty-some years while raising boys, patching my soul together through marriage and motherhood, assisting aging parents, and finding lost family.
Not likely a coincidence, a week or so before this book purge, I spent a day at a silent retreat center overlooking a rugged landscape and mountains on the horizon. A stunning, fiery sunset lit up the western sky, followed the next morning by a gentle sunrise that whispered a comforting stillness to me. I journaled in quiet by a pond layered with pink water lilies as a breeze blew through nearby pines. Wordless serenity embraced me. And exposed me.
Silence revealed that in the absence of outer noise, internal chatter is continually vying for attention. I don’t know how to quiet my head and heart. Am I even safe if I were to do so?
Decluttering feels unsafe. It rehearses deliberate acts of letting go, and is a reminder of familiar loss. It can feel like unmasking an imposter and uncovering a forgery with a side of shame. I’ve mastered stacking up distractions to avoid ambiguous emotions. Yet, to eliminate outer clutter mirrors a longing for inner quiet I don’t recognize, but need. At last, I have a growing disinterest in holding onto anything for effect.
I did make space for books I’m determined to finish, albeit slowly.
Call Us What We Carry, Relinquished, Who Is A Worthy Mother, The Truth So Far, Gnar Country, Thermal Flying, As Long As You Need, Reclaiming Quiet.
To finally display framed family photos, as well, on several freed up shelves helps me breathe.
This is not about books. Or decluttering. Or shelves.
Building a library has been a response, in part, to feeling voiceless, unseen, unheard, and unworthy. Overwhelmed with inadequacy, I’d long devoured information to become someone other. Nearly every chapter of my life has been unaligned with simply being—existing authentically just as me. Preserving past versions of myself is exhausting. I’m exhausted.
Liberally refining my library is really about naming losses, elevating authenticity, and saying goodbye to what I’ve outgrown. There’s no space left for unread, bottom-shelf books. Resurrecting formative rejection and rehearsing the seemingly unforgivable has run its course. Reinventing myself in restrictive spaces is over. Culling my trove of books reflects a new normal, to create an inner serenity found in restful silence.
As I peruse the Keepers, personal truth emerges. I’m more attentive to who I am apart from pre-verbal trauma. I’m inclined to guard how I move in the world, and cherish connections. Protecting long-awaited, hard-won reunion relationships with my precious daughter, sisters, nieces, and grandchildren has always been classified “of utmost importance.” Reversing separation in my life is a core truth, a North Star.
The Keepers have a home, for now, alongside some favorites.
Jane Eyre; The Girls Who Went Away; The Same Smile; Les Miserables; Eats, Shoots & Leaves; A Long Way Home; all of Jane Austen, including her best, Persuasion.
I turned a page somewhat later in life and discovered words and themes that help me to become the singular truthful narrator of stories I’ve lived and the story still being written. I’m leaning into a longing to create space for quiet, where silence is invited in to shape my exterior surroundings and to shift my interior life.
