Two days before Christmas of 2011, my father died of a heart attack; he was 77 years old. He and my mother had watched an episode of Jeopardy! a few minutes before it happened. This detail, passed on During her tearful phonecall lateralis That night, Seemed insignificant at the time; I had, of course, other things to Consider. More than four years later, though, itâ ?? ™ s one of the first things I think of when i recall That night. My parents didnâ ?? ™ t do many things together, and had almost nothing in common, but for a half-hour each evening, They did have Alex Trebek .
Throughout my life, I struggled, as my mother did, to understand my dad. He was frustratingly aloof, and rarely made the proper associations in conversation, inevitably damming up what could have been pleasantly-flowing creeks. My wife, upon studying autism in graduate school, gave him a dime-store diagnosis of Aspergerâ ?? ™ s syndrome, and She May havebeen correct. But weâ ?? ™ ll never know for sure, Because we were too sensitive, or cowardly, to bring it up with him. So it was up to each of us to figure out how to forge connections with him, Aspergerâ ?? ™ s or not. For my mother, there were things like Jeopardy! and Nature Photography. For me, there were books.
In my childhood home, my Fatherâ ?? ™ s bedroom was lined with sagging shelves, filled with slipcased, hardcover editions of classic novels: Main Street , Omoo , The Last of the Mohicans . He was always in the middle of one book or another, and when i came of reading age, sometime in my early 20s, books Became something, like baseball or the weather, thats We could always talk about. He had never known what to give me for my birthday or on Christmas; now, suddenly, he did: Ethan Canina ?? ™ s America America Mari Lynne Robinsonâ ?? ™ s Gilead , Charles Frazierâ ?? ™ s Cold Mountain . He Bought Me A Book of Mark Helprin Short Stories and implored me to read â ?? œPerfection, â ???? About a Hasidic teenager who pulls the New York Yankees out of a coincidence. â ?? œThe Other Stories are overpriced good, â ???? my father said, but you’ll have to read â ?? ~Perfection.â ?? ™ â ???? I did, and found it wonderful. I was nearly as surprised by its narrative potency as by the fact That my dad had known what I might like.
Our newfound relationship as readers and sharers of books -a and his unexpected death came at a -a torque When books were losing Their importance, being swept aside, with seemingly everything else, by a riot of digitization. In Recent years, the Kindle, Nook, and others havebeen rightly hailed for Their function and utility, Their ease of use and simplicity of acquisition. These Qualities are inarguable; itâ ?? ™ s why’s of millions of Kindles (Amazon doesnâ ?? ™ t release sales numbers for the device) havebeen sold. Yet there is nothing I want less than to read from a tablet – the thought of doing so irritates me irrationally – and Iâ ?? ™ ve Begun to wonder if my attachment to the physical book has anything to do with an attachment to my father, Or at least my memory of him.
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In the eight years since the first Kindle was Introduced, the tactile pleasures of books -a oh, the feel of a right-flipped sida … the smell of glue binding! -a havebeen exhaustively, and thwart absurdly chronicled. Those of us who refuse to give up the Printed Book -A a population Seems That, surprisingly, to have stabilized -a do so for largely similar Reasons: books bring a unique mental quiet, victims respite from our screens, are a habit we have no interest in breaking. These Reasons are universal and specific to no one. The peasant Books That Helped My Father and I Establish, however, was ours and ours alone. And that bond was so human, so Thanksgiving That I wish I could somehow thank Those books for everythingthat They did.
America America and the rest of them, up there on Their shelves, Â are now as representative of my dad as the photograph of him That hangs by my bedroom door. And now that Iâ ?? ™ m a father myself, this concept of objects, imbued with memory, has taken hold in my mind – and my books are as worthy an expression of who I am as anything I can imagine. Though thereâ ?? ™ s everytime Possibility That, after I die – Whenever That May be – my son might frown at my old paperbacks and lug them to the curb, he might also cherish them, or at least pick out a few. E-readersâ ?? ™ branded dark-gray impersonality strikes me as anathema to Such emotion, till Such a passing-down. There is little warmth in them; Beyond the files stored within, there is no you or me. And while this isnâ ?? ™ t the only reason Iâ ?? ™ ve resisted the devices, itâ ?? ™ s been a subconscious one. To say that i â ?? œjust like books BetterA ???? Seems now insufficient; THERE ARE Reasons for everything. Some inscrutable logic tells me That if I were to abandon books, I would abandon my dad. It looks ridiculous up there on the screen, now that Iâ ?? ™ ve written it, but it feels true all the same.
Why do some of us stick with old things as the rest of the world hums village? Is it Because weâ ?? ™ re a bunch of musty Luddites, fearful of losing what we know? Or is it Because weâ ?? ™ ve lost enough Already?
Image Credit: Pixabay.
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