What I see on the bookcase

My father-in-law is moving in with us from Michigan, so I cleaned out the bookcase in the sunroom for him this morning. At least it seemed from the outside to be the ordinary act of cleaning out a bookcase, but it was in fact something altogether other.

I have been rather stingy, I have to admit, with the allotment of space I gave to my husband when he moved in after we married. I have in me a streak of asceticism and another of beauty, and the two have reached a compromise in my decor, a precarious balance that allows some art but few other artifacts requiring dusting. Like Hummel figurines, for instance.

A departure from this rule would be the aforementioned bookcase I dismantled this morning. It contained a few classics I used to read to my daughter (now age 21) but also some books of children’s games and projects I was meaning to get around to. There were two volumes on tree identification that I planned to take along with us on walks at the nearby Pennypack Watershed. There was Snips & Snails & Walnut Whales,whose subtitle says it contains nature crafts. There was a book with 50 card games for children. There was a thick stack of yellowed papers I had printed out of a book that had every play category under the sun: painting, puppetry, toys you can make. I must have spent a fortune at the library copy machine.

That last one dates back long before my lastborn child to my two oldest (now age 34 and 32). I felt bad that time had gotten away from me for the first two kids, but was encouraged that I had two more chances with their late-in-time siblings. But I never got around to it, and there the books have sat for years, untouched and untouchable. I would dust them now and then but hurriedly, so as not to think.

I have a friend who is prone to serious clutter issues. Every blue moon people from church would come with bags and brooms and help her de-clutter, and it would tear her heart out. I was about as sympathetic as Comrade Kaprugina in Doctor Zhivago. “What does she need with her children’s baby dresses?” I thought. To me they were useless clothing, nothing more.

I got rid of most of the contents of the bookcase today, so tomorrow my father-in-law can arrange his collection there at his leisure. If you had seen me performing this task in my house you would have thought it looked like a woman very efficiently boxing up books to take to the thrift store. What you would not have seen is that I was undergoing profound soul-sifting bordering on crisis.

The point of all this is to urge you to be kind to your husband and your friend and anyone you know who is looking at some bookcase—or situation—that you are also looking at but is caught in a major paralysis that seems silly to you. He or she is seeing something you can’t see.

“Finally, all of you, have … sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart …” (1 Peter 3:8).