News of the New Year

If the start of the new year is any indication of the rest of it I am both a happy person and a happy bookseller. Yesterday we had planned to have our New Year’s dinner around six, but early in the afternoon we got a surprise call from our estate sale friend Darwin asking if we’d like to come for dinner. We said we would and I offered to bring a dessert, which I did, but it ended up on par with the loaves and fishes – something made out of nothing. The grocery store was closed and I lacked at least one ingredient for anything I tried to make. Out the window sailed pumpkin pie, apple pie, gingerbread, cranberry cookies, brownies, and cheesecake among a cookbook collection worth of other ideas ranging from exotic to predestrian. In the end the ONLY thing on the planet I could concoct was a plain vanilla made-from-scratch cake with white frosting upon which I crumbled chocolate-covered Cadbury cookies to give it a much needed zip. Actually it tasted pretty good, so it wasn’t a bad finale to pork roasted in beer and sauerkraut, ceasar salad, mashed potatoes and fresh green beans with caramelized onions. The antiques dealer, it turns out,  knows how to navigate his way around a kitchen!

Adding to the pleasure was a nice dry white wine, the company of cats (oh, I so miss my Mickey), a wonderful old house (show me a good old house and I’m weak in the knees) and spirited conversation sprinkled with high hilarity. It doesn’t get much better than that. Except it did. First thing this morning the phone rang – Eric had just left for the store, so it wasn’t even nine – and on the line was a collector wanting to buy a signed first edition of the rare George Schreyer Sr. & Jr., Gunmakers of Hanover, York County, Pennsylvania priced at $275. He’d seen it on alibris, but called me direct, which is a rare phenomenon itself from the alibris site. It happens fairly regularly on Abe, but I think this is the first time, or at least a rare time, from alibris. May the momentum continue!

Just as I finished the above paragraph I got a call from Eric’s sister to say that Aunt Ruth died this morning. Perhaps you remember that we celebrated her 92nd birthday at a small party at the nursing home two weeks ago where I gave her the Dickens pop-up book. In a way I’m not really surprised by the news because Moira and Brian and the kids and Catie and Joe went to visit Christmas Eve morning and reported that she didn’t seem to know who they were. She knew they were family, but that was about it. For the last couple days she’s done little but sleep, so in the end she just peacefully drifted away. I feel sad, but mostly glad that the end, when it came, was as serene as the way she lived her life. None of us can ask for better. If there’s a heaven Aunt Ruth’s a shoo-in. Below you can see a picture of her with our oldest grandson Tyler when he first came from Korea eight years ago.

Given this unexpected news, I think I’ll finish this later. In no way is it a bad start to the year though – not at all. It’s a surprise that isn’t really a surprise. And a dignified end to a good life spent doing good. Imagine a world in which everyone lived that way.