Bookkeeping

I am a bookkeeper.  To be more I accurate I am a book keeper.  Although it is true that I managed the accounting portion of Parker Geophysical Inc. and Parker Consulting, Inc., companies which Joe and I owned during the past 20 years, that is not the books which are in this story of keeping.  A few weeks ago, in a cleaning and clearing out project I undertook, I handled every book on the shelves in our library.  I rearranged the shelves to make more space and resolved to put fewer books back after I cleaned the shelves.  That is alwas a difficult thing for me.  As I said in the beginning, I am a book keeper!

Apparently, Mother was a keeper of books as well because I still have several of my childhood books in addition to books that belonged to her and her brothers nearly 100 years ago.  The bindings are frayed, the colors faded, and the pages yellowed, but oh my, what a rich legacy these are!  Not because they are valuable in terms of dollars, but because they tell a story far beyond the printed words on their pages. 

Beyond the edges of the pages in these children's books is a narrative of family choices and values that is dear to me.  Neither my grandparents nor my parents were well educated or wealthy. "Times were hard." is an expression I heard often when they spoke of past years.  The fact that books were important speaks volumes about family standards and values. I cannot hold these books and finger their fragile pages without thinking of being read to when I was little, and remembering that my mother had the same advantage.  It was natural that reading to my own children was always one of my favorite things to do.  It is sweet to see that tradition carried on as my sons have their own little ones who share bedtime prayers and bedtime stories.  

So these books won't go back on the shelf, at least not my shelf.  I will offer them to my children who can decide if they want to be book keepers.  In this age of going paperless and storing everything digitally, there are some things that can't be saved in a document or picture file.  There are still stories that defy having The End on the last page.