It was a Sunday, and church had just let out. The small but faithful Texas congregation lingered at the doors of Lonesome Dove Baptist Church, chatting neighborly. But not me. I leaned against the wall, hoping to be ignored like faded wallpaper. The traditional melancholy found in fourteen-year-old girls had ramped up in recent months, metastasizing in my heart to a bitter gloom.
You see, it was the year 2000, and my family had recently moved. Amid Y2K panic, I was displaced from my home and friends in the beautiful Arizona desert and suddenly plopped down in Grapevine, Texas. A state where the climate was somehow both wet and dusty. Where the people didn’t talk but drawled using made-up words like “y’all” and “fixin’ to.” Seriously, the whole state was obsessed with contractions and apostrophes.
I had taken to punishing my parents with an unrelenting gray cloud shrouding my countenance. With a frown in place, most of my time was spent inside my head, daydreaming, pouting, and attempting to escape the humid reality of Texas. I missed my friends and was too busy feeling sorry for myself to care about anyone or anything.
It was in this frame of mind I hid in the corner of the 150-year-old church like a surly houseplant. My dad walked over to the pastor to shake his hand. The elderly Pastor Quesenbury smiled, his mustache lifting as he invited our family to lunch. He said his wife had already gone to set the table at the parsonage. It was an offer impossible to refuse. My parents, being new in town as much as I was, accepted with much more gratitude than I did.
We followed the pastor across the parking lot, our church shoes growing dusty despite the recent rain. The parsonage lived among shade trees that looked as old as the church. It was a low-slung ranch-style home, well-kept and modest like any parsonage ought to be.
After the meal, the grownups lingered around the table, talking. This left my brother and I to amuse ourselves. Being four years my junior, Stewart wandered outside to muck about, no doubt tossing rocks or climbing a tree. But I was fourteen and, in my own eyes, too mature for such activities. So, I chose the more sensible option of remaining indoors. But, being fourteen, I found the adult’s conversation dull. Their smiles grated against my gloom. Soon, I wandered into an adjacent room.
It was a formal sitting area, the couch upholstered in a floral that reminded me of my granny’s couch in Waco. The first thing I noticed about the room was how lopsided it felt. I’m sure a licensed home inspector would have declared the floor perfectly level. Still, I couldn’t help but lean as if on the deck of a ship listing portside. It seemed as if the prim couch and coffee table should be sliding across the carpet to careen overboard. The reason for this imbalance hulked in my periphery. I turned to face it.
A heavy-set bookcase hunched in the corner like an elephant attempting to fit in a shoebox. Next to the bookcase was an upholstered armchair before a curtained window. The chair had a wizened, professorial look as if it required you to wear spectacles and tweed to sit there. Despite their marked contrast in size, the chair fit the bookcase like two minds in agreement.
Hundreds of books lined the shelves, organized by matching covers in rich leather. A set of encyclopedias were blue, biblical commentaries in shades of brown and yellowed cream, histories in black, and so on. I felt bashful in the presence of such a studious collection. But the bookcase seemed to pull at me like gravity. My fingers inched forward, curious, as fingers often are. I opted for the friendliest-looking spine: a cherry-red tome with gold-leafed letters reading Alice Through the Looking-Glass. Its matching siblings on either side made up the “Classics” family, the gold letters said.
The leather spine creaked. I was the first to open the book. I supposed that pastors were too burdened with high matters to be dallying with fairy stories.
I leafed through ivory-colored pages edged in gold and illustrated in black. In the background, the murmurs of my parents, pastor, and his wife shifted from cheerful to thoughtful at easy intervals. Though I wasn’t wearing spectacles or tweed, I lowered myself onto the armchair. I perched on the edge, not wanting to seem impertinent.
I didn’t realize what was happening at the time. But looking back, I recognize it for what it was. There, with the mammoth bookcase looking over my shoulder, in the pastor’s armchair, I fell in love for the first time. It was the kind of love that felt safe. Enough for me to tiptoe beyond myself, turning my attention outward instead of inward. The kind of love that makes you most like yourself, the best version of yourself. That little corner of the pastor’s house took me by the hand and pulled me from the confines of my mind—where I’d shrouded myself in loneliness and resentment, thinking I was protecting myself—and it set me down in reality. I sat in that armchair, fully present and completely content. I didn’t ache for my old home or my old friends. Instead, I felt as if I’d found a new kind of home and more friends than I could count there among the books.
At some point, Pastor Quesenbury entered the room to find me with my feet curled up in his chair, reading his books. I will never forget the way his mustache twitched. His eyes sparkled as if he had just been told wonderful news. He gushed words of approval and encouragement. “Come by anytime to read, won’t you,” he urged. As he spoke about his collection, I heard a sweetness in the Texas twang, a charm in the long, wide vowels that I hadn’t noticed before. It would take me many years to finally muster a “y’all” myself, but I didn’t mind it so much when he said it.
From that moment on, I found a permanent home among books—on shelves, in stacks, in shops, in libraries. I feel most at ease when I'm surrounded by books, most awake to reality, and most myself.
A little over a decade later, I left Texas, eventually finding a young pastor who enjoyed the same kind of books as me. And he smiled even more than that old Texas pastor. Recognizing a rare gem when I saw one, I had the good sense to marry him.
We’ve made our home deep in the heart of Alabama, in a land of “y’alls” and drawls but a bit less twang. In our front room, just off the dining room, there’s a formal sitting area where I dream of one day building bookcases that flank the window. The hulking, heavy kind with gravity all their own. And they will peer over my shoulder in a kindly sort of way, watching as I read. Friendly and safe. Just like a home ought to be.
And maybe a surly teen will come over one day. Bored and looking for distraction, maybe she’ll peruse my shelves. I trust my collection to pull a smile from her. Maybe it will give her a step up. Up out of the hardship of youth and into something brighter, more interesting than her own dreary thoughts, more real than her youthful assumptions. Maybe that girl is already in my house, only six years old now. Maybe it’ll be one of my daughter’s friends. Or maybe it’ll just be the inner child within me, resting among her life’s collection.
Until then, my books are piled and stacked around my house, with a few shelves tucked here and there. And coming soon, a new book—one of my own making—will be added to the stacks.
I can’t wait to hold it in my hands.
Just a few months more…
Shadowless, coming soon in 2025.
