Chapter 84 Dorothy and her Grand-daughter, who Lives in Oz

My Nana, my mom’s mother, passed away around this time of year fourteen years ago. She lived a long life, which was, like most people’s lives, filled with peaks and valleys. Through it all, she loved literature, finding something sustaining in books. She was smart. She should have gone to college, but her family couldn’t afford it, so after high school she went to work. She was a very witty lady, she was fond of a good party, and she loved a good story. Heck, her life was a good story. But that’s a story for another time and place.

Over the course of her life, she read all the classics she would have read had she gone to college. She never failed to love her books. When she died and I went through her books with my mom, we saw that she owned many titles by well-known authors — Shakespeare, Dante, Wordsworth, Marcus Aurelius, and the like. Most were Modern Library and Reader’s Digest editions. She had a poor man’s library, but she had a rich knowledge of and a connoisseur’s appreciation for fine literature.

When I was a kid she’d ask me what I was reading. One summer when I was about nine, I visited her and my Grand-dad. She bought me a book I was just dying to get my hands on — the novelized version of a movie that was released the previous summer — Star Wars. When I read Gone with the Wind a few years later, we had several discussions about what it would have been like to be Scarlett O’Hara. She could understand perfectly why, when making my bed — a chore I found exceedingly boring — I sometimes got sidetracked, stopping to read a page or two in a book in order to add some excitement. She’d done the same thing when she was a kid, she told me, approvingly.

I wish she could have known that I am now an antiquarian bookseller. If she were here, I know she’d want to help, and I know she’d have good knowledge of the classics, an area of knowledge in which I’ve been told my generation is sorely lacking. When I’m working here alone, in my poor man’s book store (online only, run out of 3X3 foot space in my dining room), I like to think of her as a silent partner in my business, enjoying all of the beautiful books and interacting with other people who love them as well. Her name was Dorothy, and, as her grand-daughter, I feel lucky, like I get to live in Oz, doing something she’d have loved right along with me.

Cheers, Nana!