The Illicit, Bittersweet Pleasure of Empty Bookshelves

I had to get rid of a lot of things when I downsized from a house in suburban Maryland to an apartment in Washington, DC. Rooms’ worth. Years’ worth. Over the 20-plus years we had lived there a lot more had gone in than had gone out. But what to do with it all? Go from room to room, one book advised. Decide what to keep, what to sell, what to give away and what to throw away, then start over again. Keep going until you’ve let go of everything you can live without.

I did this for weeks, spiraling from bedroom to living room to kitchen. In the “save” box went the dolls my mother-in-law had sewn for the children, in the “ditch” box the cracking plastic ones; in the “save” box the Cuisinart, in the “ditch” box the bread maker. And the ice cream maker. And all the other makers. I arranged for trucks to come to take things for charity, sold tables and chairs on Craigslist and set up a giveaway room, where friends were invited to take what ever they wanted. Sometimes I snuck into the giveaway room and took stuff back, thinking I might want a certain bowl or tablecloth after all.

I took the same approach with my books, which lined an entire wall of my office on floating teak shelves that had belonged to my grandparents. They had brought them from their home in Caracas, Venezuela, to their home in Irvington, New York, to the apartment in Maryland where they lived during their final years. After they died, I put the shelves up in my house, both a reminder of them and a beautiful place for all of my books, many of which they had given to me.

When I got rid of the things in my house, it was with a kind of mania. The more I could dispose of the better. It was the same with the books. The more I gave away, the less I would have to box up and heft up the stairs to the new place. A good friend spoke with relief of getting rid of all of her books. She could always get them as e-books if she wanted to read them again, she noted. Brilliant, I thought. This was before I understood my strong bias toward paper.

Frenzied, I summarily swept the books off my shelf: dozens of them, hundreds. Books from college—on literature, philosophy, religion—books with highlights and underlines and dog-eared pages. I got rid of novels ad infinitum: off went the Russians, and the French, and all of the 19th-century English women. Gone went books purchased and given to me as gifts, Vintage contemporaries and the hardbacks I couldn’t resist buying before they went into paper. I stuffed them into paper grocery bags, so many books that they ripped out the bottoms; I threw them into the car and onto the book carts at the library for the monthly sale, leaving them behind without a backward glance.

I didn’t put up the teak bookshelves in my new apartment. There was no need. I’d brought only a few dozen books with me, all of which I set on the built-in shelves in the main hallway. Most of those shelves were nearly bare. Just clean, white space. It felt fantastic! So light! So free!

So… empty. I felt as though I’d given away my diary. As if I’d thrown my children off a bridge. True, they were just made of paper and cardboard. But they were made of words, and those words were the ingredients that made up my life.

My children were far too old for The Middle Moffat, I book I had loved as a child—but I ached for the book itself, the weight of the hardback, the slightly torn cover. I missed the cozy feeling I’d had as a little girl, wedged onto a step of the staircase as the sun streamed over me, finding a kinship with Jane, sitting under the elm tree in front of her new house, lamenting the fact that she was a middle child, just as I was.

On a cold winter’s day I longed to sit down alongside March girls to commiserate over the fact that Marmee had said there would be no presents that year. I sided completely with Jo, who was not only unhappy about having to make the sacrifice, but couldn’t see why she shouldn’t spend the dollar she had on books for herself. She was just one of many fellow aspiring writers I’d thoughtlessly given away, including Harriet the Spy, taking notes in 1950s New York; and Cassandra Mortmain, chummily journaling about her life, her feet in the kitchen sink of a crumbling castle in 1930s England.

In giving away Ulysses, I’d cast out Molly and Leopold Bloom, companions who had tried valiantly to help ward off the mental atrophy that rivaled the physical atrophy when I was on bedrest the final few months of my first pregnancy. And with Tender is the Night, the poetic prose that had whisked me out of suburban Maryland and onto the beaches of the French Riviera my senior year of high school. Without Dubliners, I no longer had Gretta, weeping over poor, delicate Michael Furey, to accompany me in heartbreak. How was I ever going to find my way back to 1950s Naples without Lenu and Lila? Or to the lighthouse without Mrs. Ramsey?

I’d hoped I’d forget about them after I lived in the new place a while, but their absence only became more apparent as the months wore on. It was like a homesickness, a longing for time lost. These were the friends that had seen me through my childhood, through my bumpy teen and college years, as well as my bumpy adulthood. They had been there through the best and worst of it. They could take me back, from a safe vantage point, whenever I picked them up, opened the covers and read.

And now they were gone. Sacrificed by my own hand.

I had a choice: I could mourn forever, or I could try to move on. What I could not do was wallow in regret.

These days I console myself by buying books—wantonly, sluttishly—from the many independent book stores near me, and I religiously make the rounds of the Little Libraries, both official and makeshift. I spiral from block to block, the way I once did the rooms of my house, this time gathering instead of dispersing. Oh, there you are my salty friend Olive Kittridge, and Mrs. Dalloway—time to get a move on with that party! Eager to be by your side as you die again and again, Ursula Todd; and I’ve heard so much about you Celestial and Roy. Gradually, I’m refilling my shelves, bringing back old friends and inviting the new onto my newly mounted shelves, for good.