My husband’s quest for a minimalist home is futile. He longs for clean lines, mostly empty white shelves, while I feel panicked and see the house as soulless if those shelves are bare of my books. While I do continually purge my collection, the liberated spaces are quickly filled by new acquisitions.
Having watched a few episodes of “Tidying Up with Marie Kondo” on Netflix together didn’t help matters. “See? You just hold the book in your hand and see if it sparks joy or not!” While I can see that working with socks or spatulas, my relationship with books is much more involved and complicated for disposal to be reduced to such simplicity.
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A couple of weeks ago, my daughter came home with a less-than-stellar grade on her history test. When I asked about it, her reply came as a shock to me: “Why do we even need to learn history? We need to look to the future instead of the past.”
Now, I am all for forward thinking, but as someone who has spent most of her life thinking and learning about what past cultures have done, thought, and written – mainly in the context of language and literature – and how this has impacted and influenced modern thought, language, and literature, I had to stop and really think about what her reply means.
Photo: Justine McVeigh
The other day a friend of mine – on the verge of sending her youngest child off to university and probably feeling nostalgic – sent me a picture of our now-21-year-old boys playing ball in the schoolyard at age 9. She and her husband are soon to become what are known as “empty nesters.”
The Drop Off This week thousands of parents will be dropping off their kids at college and university – some for the very first time, some for their last time. But in every case, whether it is your first, middle, or last child going, this experience of dropping off your child for the first time – or being dropped off for the first time – is a monumental moment, among the most emotional and memorable in both parents’ and children’s lives. |
Follow MeAuthorI am Carla DeSantis, and welcome to my blog! I love language and words and books, and have turned this love into a business, helping others to perfect their written message. Archives
January 2020
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