When I was young, Sundays had a very routine set of feelings, every week for many years. The sleepy haze of being woken by my mother for church, her soft hands petting my hair. The beginnings of a life-long addiction to coffee, served to me before I was old enough; cracked butterfly china. The discomfort of filling up on cookies and brownies during coffee hour after a drawn out sermon. After church, we would stop by the bookstore on the way home, maybe to browse, often to buy, but always to stay for a while. It was here that my father insisted that I should get whatever book I wanted, that he would not sensor. So I read Go Ask Alice, steamy romances, complex world-ending science fiction. There was a freedom in books that real life didn't offer a 13-year-old. Shelved on quiet aisles, belying the hundreds of stories sitting on the shelves; a place to get lost for a while. Bookstores have always been that refuge for me, a destination, an after-dinner date-night stop, a place to discover. Today, I left the bookstore with two new paperbacks, their crisp pages smelling of my youth. Photo of our monogram collection by the talented Elizabeth Messina.
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