I won’t forget that day
When I came home from camp
To see my room spotless.

At first I was glad.
I came home to a super clean room!
But as I looked around, something wasn’t right.
Things were missing,
But I couldn’t quite figure it out.

It turns out my mother had purged my room whilst I was gone.
She had cleansed my closet of old toys
And my bookcase of extensive collection of Bernstein Bears and Franklin the Turtle picture books.

Never have I ever cried over picture books and Barbie dolls in my life until then.

Yes, it seemed those things just sat collecting dust because I had “grown too old for them”
But no,
For those afternoons where I had nothing better to do, I’d pull out those old dolls
Or those times when I was grounded,
I’d pull out the old dolls and play with myself.

And what about those nights I couldn’t sleep?
I’d go and pick out a stack of picture books
And I’d smile and read them to myself until I grew tired.

Now the dolls I can do without now,
But the books I cannot
For I still have those sleepless nights
(And more often than ever before)
But no more picture books to help me sleep.

But those picture books meant more to me than something to help me sleep
To me,
Each were a memory.
A memory of that time when we’d go to the local Borders and spend hours there
Reading new books
And browsing different genres and titles
Then, at the end when it was finally time to go
I’d get to buy two new books:
One chapter book
And one picture book which was always a Bernstein Bears
And if I was lucky, I’d get an Archie comic book too.

But now, they’re gone and there’s no getting them back
I don’t think I’ve ever cried because of missing picture books except for that time
And I don’t think my mom has ever felt so bad
But it’s not her fault,
She didn’t know.
It’s just too bad I won’t be able to rebuild or restore that collection.
Borders has closed down
And the books are in the hands of a new child.
They will never know how important those books were to me
I can only hope that they are as important to them as they were to me.