A stroll down memory lane...

In the past week I learned about the death of Janet Chapman, who came to her first Writers Retreat Workshop the year after Gary died. My niece, Anna, came to visit my dad and I while she attended a wedding nearby. I spent all of Saturday (and a little bit of Friday) watching the first Breeder's Cup weekend held at Del Mar Race Track (built by Bing Crosby and friends). My sister-in-law, Hope (Anna's mom) had a book reading and signing for her third Christian romance novel, which was held at our new local bookstore. And in the wider world, there was another senseless shooting, today is election day, kids went trick-or-treating for Halloween, retired mare Songbird sold for $9.5 million at the Fasig-Tipton November sales, and more men were accused of sexual harassment in Hollywood.

There was one thing in all of that which had a powerful, visceral impact, and that took me back many years. It was the moment I walked into the bookstore for Hope's reading, and was overwhelmed by the smell of books.

If you've ever read Diane Ackerman's A Natural History of the Senses, you know that smell is perhaps the most evocative of the senses.  The smell of those books took me back to Perry-Highland Library, where I proudly carried card J694, and spent hours in a library no larger than most people's living rooms.

Songbird, and my favorite jockey, Mike Smith

I could walk to the library from our house on Homer Avenue, and often did. Those were the years when a first-grader could safely go out for hours with friends, even sometimes alone, and a parent didn't need to worry. Well, except for the time I got caught in a thunderstorm and tried to shelter under a huge pine tree with some boys. The woman who lived in the house with the tree invited  us inside, knowing how dangerous it was, and I said yes. The boys ran home.

Lad of Sunnybank

I often took the long way to the library. That meant I could pass by the house where Lad, the collie lived, and visit with him if he happened to be outside. I was certain that this Lad was the reincarnation of Lad of Sunnybank, whose exploits I devoured in the books of Albert Payson Terhune, books which I discovered at Perry-Highland Library.

The other special thing about going the long way was the house on the corner, across from the small cemetery. It was a tiny house, or seemed to be. It was hidden in among a veritable forest of trees, bushes, and flowers on a quarter acre lot, and to my youthful eyes, it was mysterious and magical.

My heart aches with grief over some of the events of the past weeks. And when my heart aches, I turn to books for solace. This morning I was browsing USA Today online and ran across an article on Winnie-the-Pooh and his friends, on display in the New York Public Library. It was the first time I'd seen the originals, and as the writer of the article said, they looked loved.

It isn't that books can change or take away our grief or sadness. They might provide a brief escape, but we do always finish the story. It's more that they bring us into contact with others. The writer, who understood us without ever knowing us. The characters, who felt so much as we did. And other readers, who find a similar joy in discovering the same beauty.

So when I walked in that bookstore and smelled the books, I was back in the library of my childhood with Lad and Black Beauty. I was back on the street, peering into the jungle of mystery on the corner across from the cemetery, imagining what was inside the green branches.

Winnie-the-Pooh, Eeyore, Kanga, Piglet and Tigger all live at the New York Public Library. (Photo: Courtesy of New York Public Library/Jonathan Blanc)