Remembering

Just read the following by author Vince Passaro in July's O Magazine:

When I was 16, a small, surprisingly serious bookstore opened in my suburban town (not too many years later, once it had fed me the proper food, it closed down, leading me to believe with a combination of ego and superstition that it came into existence specifically for me).

It started me wondering what sort of impact our bookstore has had on individual people, and whether they'll remember us years from now.

Here are some of my favorite memories of customers:

The young girl who walked into the store about ten feet, stopped, breathed deeply and sighed, "Oh, I love books."

The frantic father who finally found his son and his friends at our store, where they'd been hanging out for hours. Even today, the father comes in and beams with pride at the memory of his son choosing to hang out at a bookstore!

The young boy who plunked a ziplock bag full of change on the counter and announced that he wanted to spend the money he'd earned to buy a book for his brother.

The mom who called up one day to say that her daughter intended to spend her honeymoon at The Read Leaf.

The woman who told us she'd overheard a couple of teenage boys arguing in a grocery store in the next town over about whether the name of our store was pronounced "red" leaf or "reed leaf." [And by the way, we pronounce it "red," but we answer to anything.]

The woman who burst into tears when we had a copy of a book she'd been hunting down for 20 years.

The woman who had me in tears as she described how much a book we'd recommended had helped her stepson start to deal with his father's suicide.

I know we're doing the right thing by selling the store. We truly can't sustain it financially over the long term. Roger has to find a job, and I am not up to running it and being a good mom to Jack. As it is, I'm working 40-60 hours a week, with Roger right beside me at the store and being a dad. But even though I know we're doing the right thing, and even though I know the new owners will do a great job consolidating their toy store with our bookstore, it makes me so, so sad to see the essence of what we've built go away.