Land without Borders
A good friend told me more than a week ago that our local Borders was closing and though I believed her, I refused to embrace that sad pronouncement as a part of my personal reality. I did not have to deal with it the day she told me. I could fully immerse myself in the first stage of grief known as denial. For about a week.
But then the email came yesterday from corporate telling me a Borders in my area was closing – as if I didn’t know – and with audacious and wholly inappropriate !!!’s, I was summarily invited to come strip the shelves clean because everything must go.
I posted a lament on Facebook, expressing my melancholy, daring the cruel world to just give me a dang paper cut and pour lemon juice on it, ala Miracle Max. Comments to the post bolstered my belief that it’s a sad, sad day when a bookstore closes.
I had three weeks earlier visited the beloved Borders in downtown San Diego, a victim of the first round of cuts, and left within ten minutes of arriving. The yellow and black caution tape flung everywhere was too much for me. Bad accidents and natural disasters and yellow & black caution tape go together. But not that tape and books. I should’ve known walking into my own Borders – a 10-minute drive from my front door – that there would be yellow tape there, too. And exclamation points. And dazed shoppers like me, shuffling through the aisles like zombies unaccustomed to doom.
Last night’s visitation was painful. As I told a friend later in the evening, I’ve never been so sad walking out of a bookstore with a bagful.
The clerk who waited on me, dear Brian, who I only met for the first time last night, took his time though the check-out line behind me stretched 40-people deep. We talked as strangers at a funeral of a mutual friend. Then he picked up his black Magic Marker and told me he needed to run a black mark through all the bar codes because sales were final. And I nodded a “Do what you must.”
His hand was trembling and he laughed nervously and said, “I can’t believe I am doing this to a book. I’ve been doing it all day and my hands are still shaking.” Then he told me he loves books so much he can’t ever make a mark in or on one. Not even when he was in college. He filled piles of spiral-bound notebooks with notes from the books he had to read rather than highlight any of them.
“Sorry,” he said as he marked my books.
I was the sorry one. I was losing a store I really liked. He was losing a job he really loved.
When the deed was done, he handed me my books and I wished him well.
“It’s been very nice to know you these last five minutes, Brian,” I said.
He smiled and replied, “Have a great night.”
And I left and didn’t.
Goodbye Carmel Mountain Borders. You were a good friend. I have other friends like you, but you will be missed.
And Brian, whereever you are, all the best, brother. . .