TwitterMay 18 2010
Where have I been? What have I been doing?? Glad ya asked. . .
So how’s Zac’s? Well his health by outside observations is improving. He is looking and acting better than he has in at least two years. We still have a long road ahead but things are improving so I’m thankful. I manage to pick him up from school almost every day from school at 11:30. How? It’s really beyond me. I just some how seem to manage it. I have one family that is totally fine with me loading their child in the car and going to get him so that helps a lot. But overall it really slices the day and takes a bunch of time but it’s worth it to see him get well.
In the last few weeks…and months since the time Zac’s health became an issue the demands on my time have increased a ton. I have worked as much as I did when my kids were all little and I home schooled. Except this work falls outside of the relhm of housewife/mother. My life has been jamming overtime. And it wasn’t simply due to Zac and his needs. My work has shot through the roof and I am working 6-7 days a week and often for two families in one day. I can work 9-12 hours a day several days a week. Some days starting at 6 a.m. Then we are planning and creating some very unique, cutting edge things with our business so in spite of the work I do to generate money, I am at meetings many times a week and working for hours on the projects. In between I squeeze my kids, maybe a movie, and some walking. Like today I worked 9:30 am-8 pm and afterwards I went to my kids house and Grace and I walked for 50 minutes in her neighborhood and talked for another half hour standing outside, by my car, in the cool of the evening and the soft light of the street lamps, surrounded by the soothing sounds of night critters.
I love these moments with my kids. The night, the stillness, the pleasure of being and sharing…quietly…
Tonight held a specialness that was meaningful to us both. I was able to share something with Grace that I never knew she didn’t know….
When my kids were little bitties I started collecting books and building a library for them. Books are my thing. Always have been since I was in second or third grade. I even worked in a library once upon a time, when I was in highschool, and I would help the college students find resources that they were blank on how to find. Whenever they came to the library it was me the sought out.
I started my children’s library so that books would be ready and at their finger tips. I built a library filled with classic literature, fun children’s novels series, marvelous picture book/little children’s books, ya know Seuss, I Can Read, Eric Carle, Margret Wise Brown, H. A. Rey. . . history books of various levels 2nd-highschool. Series of books that were known for their accuracy and being a good historical novel read. I had science books by topic, and art books, and great novels for kids that have stood the test of time as well as were being currently published and were simply wonderful. The library I drew together has likely two thousand volumes and it moved with us three times. Today it resides in the finished basement of their home and until tonight my daughter had no earthly idea of its history. She was quite young by the time I finally completed it so she didn’t know that when her brother John was 5 I started the collection by buying, at an auction, a library from an elementary school that closed and we hauled 35 tall, white boxes of books home, that I weeding through to cull out the good picture books, children classics, and the science and history ones worth keeping… probably a hundred. Then there were the years of library sales, garage sales, and the Berry Hill Book Store in Clinton, New York that houses an incredible store, inside an old barn, that is three stores high and I can’t even tell you how deep. The best, most organized used book store I have ever been in anywhere, ever on the planet. We went there frequently and always to their clearance sale in the very early summer where we competed with a line of people each carrying a box to fill with his $1 a book bargain days. We were there John, Blessing and I each with a box. Every time we filled one John hauled it to the check out, took it to the car, dumped it, and returned for us to fill again.
I was very careful and particular with my book choices because you can own a boat load of books but have very little of real value at the end of the day. Oh, I let the kids have random books and they enjoyed them but when it came to the library that was another matter all together…that was for the books that have and would stand the test of time. Others that would give super educational value with ease, wonder, and fun. And today that library is still being used. Something I was unaware of. Grace tells me that I have a ton of the books that the elementary school has, the one she left in the fall to move on to middle school but Cal and Dan attend. She can’t tell me how many times Cal is disappointed that he wanted to get a certain book out of the school library and it wasn’t there and she tells him, “We have that in the basement you know?” Then she tells me how many times she was able to do full projects for school from those same books and how thankful she was for the ones that are “resource only” at school and she couldn’t take out but she could sit on her basement floor and do her project with the same book. This touched my heart. I didn’t know this, being that the divorce is going on 5 years I’ve missed a lot of this sort of end of the nitty gritty of their lives simply by not being there, in the house in the swirl of the daily. And it really didn’t seem to stand out for her to tell me till tonight. And when I found out the books that I lovingly gathered for my children, all those years ago, for their enrichment are indeed still being used when I thought it wasn’t caused tears to swell in my eyes. My labor of love continues to give…
I love books. They seem to grow up out of the floor boards wherever I am. 
There is so much more I could write! But the bed beckons.
Night for now…love ya,
Theresa Jane
–Soon I will be writing about what’s current with our business. I’m excited about sharing it and looking forward to when I can. Plus I’m excited to go from planning to doing. Can’t hardly wait. We’ve done a lot of work that is finally coming together into the most wonderful way making the work all worth while.
I just introduced Brett to Berry Hill the other week. I hadn’t been for a long time and he was looking for old books with interesting covers. He loved it! And the chickens have been placed in a very fancy chickenyard so we enjoyed looking at all the different varieties of chickens also. It was great. Such a unique place.
OMG! It’s been this long since you introduced him to it. Wow!! He’s been living a deprived life. Well I’m sure it revolutionized his life. I know I love, love, love, love, love that place. LOL!
Theresa Jane
What a nice way to come back to us, TJ. I’m the same kind of book-lover, and always wished we could have a library – but we never could at home, so I became a real fixture at Public and school libraries. Great story, and I’m glad it happened to you.
Oh wow, terrific you’re a book lover! I can’t tell you the hours I spent in them growing up and and the hours with my kids. I’d take them and we would check out like 50 books among us all. Each with their own cards so they had the thrill of checking out books. There were books for fun reading and school. Keeping track of them could challenge me to new heights of patience though, but it never kept me from taking them all back three weeks later when they were due and doing it all over again. Surprisingly we incurred very few total loses. I think two, possibly three seemed to have been absorbed into our lives somehow and I paid for them. A couple I actually found later in life but by then we had moved and well I had paid for them so they were now ours. LOL
Theresa Jane