Lavender Blue Days and Library Books

I love books. My uncle has the biggest personal library I have ever seen, and he helps me add to my own burgeoning collection now and then. We went book shopping at the Caliban outlet (up a few storefronts on Craig from the real Caliban) and when I left I had three bags full. Later that day I showed a friend what I had purchased and I suddenly realized with horror mounting, as I pulled each book out, I have a problem. Those books painted a vivid and disturbing picture of the person who picked them and took them all home. What was in there? Well...

1. Women Who Kill by Ann Jones
2. The Journals of Sylvia Plath (got home and discovered I already had a copy)

3. An Outline of Abnormal Psychology (published in 1921)

4. Cranial Surgery (published 1926)
5. The Metamorphosis - Kafka

6. A Children's Garden of Verses by Stevenson

Among others. Oy.

The cranial surgery one is pretty funny, just because of how little they really knew at the time. I watch enough Discover Health Channel to notice the advances we've made.

But I'm happiest about getting the Robert Louis Stevenson book. I picked it up because I thought the illustrations were pretty and it was old, and the uncle was paying. When I brought it home it stayed in the kitchen for a few days. After about three days my mom came to me and asked me where that book came from? Was it mine? Did it come in the mail? It turns out she had a copy just like that one when she was a kid. Her sister has it now and I think she has missed it because she's been carrying it around ever since.

I can understand that. My own favorite childhood book had eluded me for years till we found each other again. As a child, my mother would take me to the local library. The library was a beautiful building that looked like a castle from the outside and had trees and pigeons and friendly hobos all around it. I felt it was a magic place. During one trip to the library I saw a small old book, and on the spine it had very colorful handwritten letters: BEYOND THE PAW PAW TREES BY PALMER BROWN. I picked it up and after glancing at the cover I knew I had to check it out. I was probably 7 then and I fell in love with that book.

The story was perfect - a little girl whos father is gone - he makes his living chasing rainbows - takes a trip to see her aunt, who lives on a mirage. She leaves on a day when the sky happens to be lavender blue. This is no coincidence; special things always happen on lavender blue days. She brings her cat, meets a fat lady on a train, and gets a camel, a parrot, and some weird little pink fuzzy animal called a toby on the way. Oh, and she finds her dad, too. They find the rainbow and the gold at the end. It's adorable. The illustrations are ornate and whimsical. There's nothing about that book I do not love. I would estimate that I checked that book out at least 20 times in between the ages of 7 and 10. When I was 11, tragedy struck. They had taken it out of circulation.

For years I tried to track it down. Ebay, Amazon, book sales, antique stores. A couple of times I did see it, but it was a cruel joke. Today that book is worth around $250.00, which I certainly could not afford. I just couldn't forget about that book! I could not let it go, because I loved it so intensely. The books I read when I was a kid have influenced me immensely, and that includes Beyond the Paw Paw Trees...and Medea.

Anyway, cut to me at 19, waiting for my friend at a coffee shop. It's a lovely spring day and I sat outside smoking and drinking my coffee. All of the sudden I look up and notice - the sky is lavender blue. It is a lavender blue day! That reminded me of the book, so when my friend showed up I told her about it. She smiled after I finished and told me to stay there, she'd be back in a minute. About five minutes later she came back and put something on the table in front of me. My book! It was a copy of Beyond the Paw Paw Trees: The Story of Anna Lavinia. I could have cried. She'd purchased it at a library sale the day before at the paltry sum of fifty cents.

Not only was is the book, oh no - it was the book. It was the very same copy I read as a kid, stamped with the library branch name and all the markings. So it found its way back to me eventually, on a beautiful lavender blue day.