Wish you were here

 "Mothers are all slightly insane," Holden Caulfield says at one point in The Catcher in the Rye. I always knew what he meant. It was never a quote that I puzzled over. In five words, he nailed it.

                                                                

My mother holding me, age 7 weeks

Yes, mothers are all slightly insane, some more slightly than others. They're insane because they can never be certain, ever, that their child(ren) is(are) completely without harm. They are on some kind of alert twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year. Some part of them never sleeps. You can't be that attentive and worried for that long and not be slightly crazy.  Combine this worry with powerlessness—as soon as the boy or girl steps out of the house (out of the room, actually), they can't do a thing to protect them.

                                                                           

Holding her twins with me pondering. She had three children within eleven months

I think of my own mother, of her difficult life, and of her living alone after her divorce. For years. I think of all that she tried to do with that ache and pull toward her children. I think of her carrying that ache of loving me and that love unrequited, and how can you stand that day after day year after year? She used to say to me, "I get lonely for you, Richie."  I think of her probably feeling she hadn't been a good mother, and how that must have devastated her after worrying about us so deeply and so continuously.  I think of her bright, sharp mind, love of writing and reading and of her unblemished soul. 

                                                                               

In Old Greenwich, CT, sometime in the 1970s

It's too late to tell her that I love her. I tied to do justice to her memory in a piece called "The Wheaton Girl". She went to Wheaton College. "The happiest days of my life," she told me. I doubt she'd like it. She didn't want her weaknesses exposed, and who would? I wrote another about watching her hang out the wash when I was a kid. Still not right. I'm not here to say anything silly like, tell your mom you love her before it's too late. (Or maybe I am.) I'm just here to say to you, Mom, that you deserved better. But I can't. Because you're dead. I think about you every day. I hope you've found peace.

                                                                               

The only time my mother saw my daughter, Becky

In the long run

 I was riding my bicycle one afternoon in New Orleans where I live.  Peddling down a street, I looked to my left, and I saw a young woman pushing a baby stroller.  She had that determined look about her I had seen on so many mothers’ faces all my life.  It was clear she had things to do.  I could see her mind working as she pushed her baby forward with a strong stride.  I slowed down, so that for a moment or two, I was traveling at the same speed as she.  I saw her take her phone from a bag attached to the back of the stroller.  She punched in a number, began talking, and continued pushing the stroller along.  Has there ever been a more capable multi-tasker in this world than a mother?  I’d seen this sight thousands of times, but this morning it gave me great solace and hope.  This mother was doing what mothers have been doing, in one form or another, forever.  This hasn’t changed.  Mothers are pushing strollers everywhere.  And they always will.

The Owl & Turtle

I see that Owl & Turtle, a small, superb bookstore in Camden, Maine, is up for sale.  The news saddened me.  I imagine it saddened many others as well.  I hope a buyer is found.  How difficult to maintain a bookstore in these assaultive times, I can hardly imagine.  But perhaps there is an affluent book lover, or a daring one, or both, who would be willing to come to the rescue.  I hope so. 

The Owl & Turtle has been serving Camden for fifty years.  I knew it through its most recent owners, Craig and Maggie White.  It was Maggie who I talked to when I went to The Owl & Turtle.  Craig was usually working the café to one side of the store.  I spent the last four summers in the Camden area, and I went to The Owl &Turtle as often as I could.  I loved going there. 

After you have experienced many bookstores in your life, you come to know, after a few minutes, when you explore a new one, if it’s the real thing.  If you have struck literary gold.  By that I mean that the books you see were chosen with learning and love.  That’s what I experienced after my first visit to the bookstore.  What book did I see in my initial walkabout in The Owl & Turtle that assured me I was dealing with the real thing?   It was A Fan’s Notes by Frederick Exley. Now, here’s someone who knows their books, I thought.  Published in 1968, the book was taken by many to be one of the first American memoirs.  It couldn’t have been a best seller at that point, because it had been all but forgotten.  Yet, there it was.  Because the owners felt it should be there.

Spending time is a fine bookstore is like strolling through a city you love.  You walk down aisles, pause and gaze, a bibliophilic tourist, encountering new titles by names you may or may not know.  It’s exciting.  I never emerged from The Owl & Turtle without having learned something,  So, I go to a bookstore to be surprised and delighted.  I also go to a good bookstore to be advised.  And that is what Maggie did on more than one occasion.  I asked her to recommend a book.  Now, the simple fact is that too many book recommendations fall flat for me.  I sometimes want to question my friendship after reading a book a friend recommended to me.  Looking about at that books that line the shelves of The Owl & Turtle, I immediately trusted Maggie’s judgment.  A good bookseller is a sommelier for your mind.  She recommended Notes on a Silencing by Lacy Crawford.  I read it.  I loved it. Trust, confirmed.

Now, her counsel will not be there when I come to Camden.  Nor will it be for those who live there and who visit.  I was thinking of how wonderful that bookstore that must have been in the winter months when its gets dark so early in Maine and when it’s cold and when a trip to The Owl & Turtle must have been so restorative.  I’m sure it was a refuge for many who live in or near Camden as they slogged through those winter days.  And what a way to introduce children to the mystical world of books and reading it must have been.  I’m sure there are many children who grew up there, literarily speaking.

It’s probably too late to implore Maggie and Craig not to sell The Owl & Turtle.  It probably came to that a while back now.  I can’t imagine how difficult it was to make that decision.  But it’s not too late to thank them for all that they gave anyone who stepped foot into their lovely bookstore.