The first fire of the season. . .

It sounds so grand to say that we spent last evening reading in the library, in front of this winter's first fire. There was no butler to bring us cigars. We didn't play chess. The library is small, the original 1700's log cabin that sits in the middle of this sprawling, eclectic house. The shelves are full. We have read, and/or used all the books, many more than once. And even though we give them away, and take them in cartons to used book stores, they continue to come in the door. The one-click purchase option at Amazon is a wicked amenity. Books migrate to other rooms, held in the hand of the absorbed commuter. We put shelves in the bathrooms, sidetables next to couches; shelves and sidetables in the bedrooms. There are few places to sit in this house where there is not something to read within arm's length. And still books collect, perhaps like refugees from foreign lands, drawn to communities of their own.
I grew up in a reading family, married a reading man. Like many reading adults, I vividly remember the children's library to which I was finally given access. I remember its smell, the paper leaves I could put on my tree for the summer reading program as I worked my way through Nancy Drew, or even more consequentially, the shelf of little blue biographies. How many were there? I'm guessing twenty or so, all men, except for Florence Nightengale and Clara Barton, appropriately heroic nurses. No Elizabeth Cady Stanton, or Eleanor Roosevelt, much less rabble rousers like Margaret Fuller.
I didn't notice. One didn't in the fifties, raised by a woman who quit her college degree and then her nursing career to be married to a man who went out in the world, supporting her and her increasing pile of babies. I devoured the hero's stories, one after another, absorbing the lesson from Abraham Lincoln and Davy Crockett: from the moment of your birth, you were destined for greatness, which is why you had to grow up either in abject poverty, mostly alone, or born to privilege, as were the Roosevelts, but with a burning, pure desire for a huge life. I had a burning, pure desire for a huge life, or at least one a little bigger than Crescent Elementary. So I studied hard, which came easy. I excelled academically, because it made everyone around me happy, and it helped to satiate a kind of gnawing hunger.
I read and retained, at least for awhile, and I was transported. There was this enormous world out there, contained in all of these volumes, with their enigmatic titles. How could they manage to stay closed, shelved as they were, when they were bursting inside with magical tales, words, one after the other, each one evoking a different world. I read through all the Oz books, still remember their differing colors.
It isn't that I want to escape this world; I don't. But I continue to be awed by the power of words, limited as they are, to bring us these windows into this reality with which we have been gifted.
The shutting down of the gardens, bringing wood from the barn to the front porch, turning on lamps earlier in the day, longer sleeves, long-simmering soups. . .all lead to the library after dinner, in front of the fire.
I am so grateful. . .