Books fall open
You fall in
Delighted where
You’ve never been.
D McCord, Norwich Bookstore complimentary bookmark
It’s spring in Vermont. Maple trees are red, robins have returned and my neighbor has planted peas. Trout lilies and trillium bloom along woodland paths. Even so, the cream-colored daffodils in my garden suffered a chill last night, as the temperature dropped into the 20s. The brave flowers were limp, heads to the ground, as I passed by them on our morning walk. By now, they are recovering. Yet their earlier bearing of downheartedness remains with me. I feel it too, though more sharply.
In recent months, death has moved in among too many people I have known well. I spoke not long ago at the “celebration of life” for a college roommate, and only last week I attended a service in Massachusetts for a dear friend from graduate school days. I had strong ties to both of these women that included being in close touch as we raised our children. Their passing is profoundly sad for me.
Sad too are the deaths of an old neighbor from my years of growing up in the Midwest, and of a daughter’s father-in-law, in Germany. With that, a grandson has lost his opa.
Still, in the midst of these separations, I’ve had brighter moments, among them connections with several heartening books. Today three are high on my list. The first two are related to my newly rekindled love of needlepointing. I had done a few pieces earlier in my life, influenced by the fact that I come from a family of stitchers. Also, years ago and living in London, I had bought and worked on an elegant Elizabeth Bradley floral design.
But this past winter, in the company of a group of neighborhood women, I was lured back to it and am elated to be working on a brilliant red poppy, another Elizabeth Bradley pattern. One of the wonderful books that has just entered my life was mentioned in the needlepoint group by my friend Scarlett. As she lovingly stitched away on a canvas depicting Beatrix Potter’s frog, Jeremy Fisher, we all began talking about Potter and the books we knew by her and about her. Scarlett owned a historic copy of “The Journal of Beatrix Potter: 1881 to 1897.” I’ve borrowed it and I’m eager to learn more about this woman I’ve admired for so long. From that discussion, we segued easily into my recollections of a wintertime visit to the Morgan Library in New York, where I saw the fabulous exhibit, “Beatrix Potter: Drawn to Nature.” In the bookstore there, I again came upon “Beatrix Potter’s Gardening Life,” by Marta McDowell, a book I’ve had my eye on for quite awhile. Others knew it too. It’s time for me to make the purchase.
By chance, I have also recently discovered a book by the essayist Annie Dillard. In 2016, she published a collection of old and new pieces which she called “The Abundance.” Remembering with affection her earlier works, I look forward to her latest offering.
Even the introduction to Dillard’s book, written by the English writer Geoff Dyer, is important. It underscores the significance for so many of us of our ongoing relationships with books. Whether we are writers or not, reading is essential. Books offer enrichment and guidance; they ignite the imagination. Sometimes they extend a lifeline. Dyer highlights Dillard’s deep and complex choices of subject matter, along with the richness of her details and word choices. Dillard, he says, owes everything to “whichever books she has in her duffle bag….”
Spring brings hope. Summer lies ahead. I have retrieved from its high shelf not a duffel bag like Annie Dillard uses for her books, but my own well-worn market basket. It is where, for the whole of a summer, I stash the books I am reading. Fortunately, there is also room in the basket for my needlepoint.
Mary K. Otto, formerly of Norwich, lives in Shelburne, Vt. Readers may email her at maryotto13@gmail.com.