As a young woman, rising five children virtually by herself, Kenny would escape to her books for solace. A voracious reader and lover of books she was never awarded nearly enough time to read all she longed for. Her escape came usually in the afternoon while her children were napping. This of course was after many hours of changing diapers, rocking babies, preparing meals, breaking up fights, cleaning up vomit and so on and so forth for day after day. But when nap time came she ran to her bookshelf to snatch one of her favorite reads. Finally her escape from the mundane had arrived and she could be transported to another world for hopefully an hour or so. I have taken a picture of a part of her shelf for you to examine.
No where will you find "Debbie Does Dallas", "Hungry for Love", "Kamasutra" or anything of the sort. Look carefully and read the spines and you will see Einstein, E=MC2 ..... Now I know of NO ONE who has ever or will ever read these titles on their own volition. Most people I know wouldn't even read them if required without Cliff Notes but enough of my personal comments. You now have the necessary background to understand where I am going.
Due to her insatiable love for books Kenny supported her local library. She bestowed numerous books as well as donated a substantial amount financially to the library. She was indeed one of their larger contributors. Her progeny also gained this love so we can fully empathize with her but I have now arrived to the part where I can explain my revelation.
While Kenny was younger doing all this donation stuff I think she should have put the money into a savings account and let it accumulate. A person could name that account something they could easily remember, like let's say, hummmm.... "Library Account". This savings would grow and grow to be rather respectful I would imagine.
Now if you fast forward to old age, say 86 years old all of a sudden you become the charity and pray your money will last as long as you do. Donations to all these other wonderful endeavors pretty much dries up. At this ripe old age many folks have become forgetful, call it dementia, Alzheimer's or just getting old. For Kenny, the pix below describes her plight.
We also have no interest in collecting another thing at this stage of the game not even books so we visit our local library. There is one gigantic problem however that we could not foresee nor can seem to overcome. Every book ever held in Kenny's hands were marked and underlined with comments written in the margins. She underlines like it is her job, totally forgetting our words like "this is not your book", "this is a borrowed book", "leave your pencil in the other room while reading."
Due to the markings these books are no longer usable for the library consequently they must be replaced with new, clean copies. Do you remember that "Library Account" we set up years ago? Aahaaaa, we now withdraw from there and everyone is happy. Of course we have enough in the coffers to pay for a new wing to the library(this is if we actually had set up this account) but that dang proverbial question will still rear it's ugly head once again, "Will we have enough money to make it till the end of her life?"
Funny and thoughtful, HYandM. That trait has run in the family, of marking in books that is. I have loaned out some of my books, and a friend told me once she enjoyed my notes in the margins better than the book! Yikes!:0
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