Unearthing my history
Erica and I spent most of yesterday unboxing and shelving books in our new home. Many of the books have been boxed up for some time or I’ve been apart from them, because they’ve been in one place while I’ve been living in another.
I have been ruthless in putting a lot of books back into boxes with a view to selling them - mostly books I no longer feel any relationship to. I have been a book lover all my life - I learned it from my mother, who developed a huge collection of books over her lifetime - and I develop a personal relationship with certain books, particularly those I’ve learned something really special from or which I have particularly enjoyed.
Even now I remember books that gave me a particular thrill or which have a particular significance from my childhood: Dracula by Bram Stoker, which I read during my last summer term at Nevill Holt (my prep school); Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens, which I studied for ‘A’ Level, are just two examples. But as I went through my library, I found books that I had bought to meet a particular need at a particular time in my life. Time has moved on and I have moved on, and the books are no longer important to me, so out they go.
This is actually quite a change in my attitude. In the past, I refused to get rid of any books, no matter how old or irrelevant. It would have been like dumping my friends. But now I live in a smaller house and I’m older. I look at some of my books and think, ‘I’m never going to read that book on watercolour painting again (or at all - I’ve always bought many more books than I’ve read); I’m not going to do Zen meditation or become a professional photographer.’
This represents a sea change in me. If I’ve lived without that book about writing stories for children for seven years and now that I’m a couple of years away from 60, should I keep it. Does it make sense? I’ve had many dreams and ambitions in my life which remain unfulfilled, and which - sub specie aeternitas - are actually rather unimportant. These dreams and ambitions are reflected in the considerable number of ‘how to be a better/more skilled person’ books that I’ve accumulated over the years - and which now look ridiculous. So now my priorities are different than they were when I was thirty or forty or even fifty. So out go the books that reflect past priorities.
As we dug into the boxes I found my notebooks and diaries. I was amazed at the pages and pages I’ve filled with diary entries and notes of all kinds over a lot of years - most of which are could only describe as maunderings. I found a diary I kept for a time in the 1950s - repetitive entries of the ‘I had fun playing with my friends’ kind. No great insights, nothing to indicate the onset of genius - so a pretty good prediction of today’s reality, then.
And, joy of joys, I found school reports and other school documents, my first letter home from boarding school, school photos and other treasures that my mother had kept. When I read the diaries and look at the school reports, I connect with my own history - much of which I had forgotten, much of which seems now to have happened to someone else.
Technorati Tags: books, Dracula, Bram Stoker, Nevill Holt, Little Dorrit, Charles Dickens
3 comments
this is a really touching and funny account.I feel like we all do this unearthing from time to time but how much more surreal to do this when you are moving house and have collected decades worth of personal reflections.I say surreal because I think I am also one of thos sentimental types who will find it hard to part with things that may be useless ,but because they were there they are friends.I think we should not underestimate how difficult it is is to accept that I/you will not be an x,y,and z so it really this is a sea change in you,thanks for sharing Mr Leith.
Thank you for your comment, Sanisha. I find myself thinking more and more about what my children and grandchildren will know or remember about me. I look at photos of my parents and grandparents and I always wish they had left more traces of themselves and their lives so that I could know more about who they were before I was born.
When my mother-in-law passed away, my father-in-law asked me to give the eulogy. My job was made easy by the fact that she had written a short autobiography of her eaerly years, her childhood in Wales, how she became a Bah?’?, how she married my father-in-law and so no. I could hear her voice in what she had written.
This is partly why I write diaries and a blog - partly for my benefit, but also in the hope that they will be of interest to my descendants. It is amazing how quickly people’s memories fade.
YES!!! another good reason to blog.Even my parents,i don’t really know what they were like at my aage and their friends don’t know either,its a pity thats we may know more about the lives of famous entertainers and their achievements than our own relatives,right now i would rather know what my grandparentr were doing in India than ,for example that Tom Cruise has just become the father of a baby named Suri..these are the details I unfortunatly have blocking my system.
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