Day 115: In what is turning out to be a week of Books for me, I’ve been thinking about one of the many dabbling projects Mom and I did together. She taught me very early to recognize the quiet awe of adoration I felt as I walked into a library. How could so many books be written? How many billions of words could be strewn into sentences? It was a silent wonderment, standing amidst the stacks.
She also taught me to treat with care the privilege of walking away from the library with a tote bag filled to overflowing with books that did not belong to me. To turn down a corner was a felony, I was certain. So, Mom and I made bookmarks. We bought bookmarks. We used items not designed as bookmarks, as bookmarks. It became a thing. We crocheted them. We colored them. We painted them. We decoupaged them. We snipped them like snowflakes. We wove ribbons into them, all in the name of preserving the yellowed corners of our favorite pages.
After she had passed away and we gathered to go through her belongings, it was common for such items to flutter free from her books. “Another bookmark,” we’d say, as if each one was a clue to a mystery she’d tucked away for us to find. Sand dollar poems, handwritten verses of scripture, playbills from my brother’s plays, and photographs of her grandchildren seemed to be her favorites.
What do you use as a bookmark? And what clue will you leave when your bookmark flutters free from the pages it was tucked between? What will your bookmark say to the finder? I hope, someday when my children find mine, they will hear me say, “You are my bookmark. I have tucked you tight into the creases. You, my dears, are marking the parts I cannot bear to ever forget.” #MomsCompanyTowels #YouAreMyBookmark #HappyDabbler #WordNerd
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