lucinda was enthralled. "will it fold up with me in it?"

[aamcnamara]

So I found the book that has the Murphy bed in it--whatwasthatbook helped me find it. It's Roller Skates by Ruth Sawyer. The same place helped me find another book I'd been trying to think of while on vacation, which turned out to be The One Hundredth Thing About Caroline by Lois Lowry.

Earlier this year, at Wiscon, I was reminded of The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet by Eleanor Cameron.

What all of these things have to do with each other is that I remembered we had a box of children's books in the basement and that perhaps if I found that these books would be in there. I looked, but the box wasn't there.

My next theory was that this box got put in the storage unit during the years when my family used same, and might be in the garage still. Unfortunately, when I put this theory to my mother, I did not get "oh yes! We should go out and look tomorrow morning!".

I got, "no. There were some books that got ruined with water damage while we had the storage unit, though. They were warped and moldy, and I had to throw them out."

Even though it was years ago, and I didn't notice or care then (I was a Big Girl and much too old to read such books), and I certainly can't do anything about it now, I am still mourning them tonight. I just remembered about these books and how excellent they were, and now it turns out that they ended up in the garbage, moldy and warped and water-damaged and unloved. My mother didn't even remember us owning those books.

But, she said, she has Paypal credit from eBay and if I sent her a list of the books I remembered as being in that box, she would buy me replacements from eBay or Amazon.

Don't I have a good mother?

Of course it will never be the same--but still.

Comments

[aliseadae]

Childhood books are Important Things.

[jennygadget.livejournal.com]

no, it won't. (I still have the same copy of A Little Princess that I read as a child and I have so far resisted replacing it even though it is all taped up and falling apart). but not moldy books are better than moldy books.

and yes, you have a good mother

and omg! I remember that book too! but not the Murphy bed part.

[keyan-bowes.livejournal.com]

One of the joys of internet has been the replacement of childhood books I threw out long years ago because I outgrew them. It validates memories.

Now I hang on to my kids' books. They'll want them in a decade or two.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Being reunited with your proper books is very important. I was thrilled when they reissued D'Aulaire's Norse Gods and Giants, even though they have renamed it D'Aulaire's Book of Norse Myths, because the book itself is the same with all the right stuff it is supposed to have. (I checked it out from the library very very regularly when I was small, so I never had a copy of my own to get mold damaged.) We have mostly replaced the lost/damaged ones we owned and are moving on to library things and things friends had that seem needed around here.

[aliseadae]

Ooh! D'Aulaire's! One of my books is the one on Greek Myths. My parents are very good at keeping my books so far. (Although my mother bothers me about having many now, she keeps the important ones from my past.)