old books

there's something to be said for keeping old books. this morning, after getting up "late" because of the time change, i went upstairs to the library to look for the second of SM Stirling's Nantucket trilogy. and just a few books down on the shelf were three paperback novels by Irving Stone. looking at them, i remembered that i had been planning to re-read Stone's novel about Mary Todd Lincoln before Barbara Hambly's biography of her (The Emancipator's Wife) arrived from Amazon sometime in June. so i went over to the hardback shelves and started looking at my very old Irving Stone books. i bought and read these in my late teens and early twenties. most of them i had gotten for 25 cents in used bookstores back in the 60s. i pulled out "Love is Eternal", opened it to the title page, and then noticed a little end of white paper sticking out of the middle of the book. since i tend to use odd things as bookmarks, i opened to it.

and found a photo of myself walking down the aisle on my older brother's arm at my first wedding in 1972.

when david and i broke up in 1974, he took our photo albums including the one from our wedding, all the baby pictures, and all the photos of our time in montana. i had maybe one or two odd bits and pieces from those years, and have always regretted the lack sorely.

and here in a book that i obviously haven't touched in more than thirty years is the cream of the crop of wedding pictures that my brother-in-law dick took at our wedding on christmas eve in 1972. and all these years, from montana to california to washington to colorado - over a dozen different moves - the photo had been laying there safely and snuggly in a the Lincoln biography.

and now i have a photo of myself at 20, walking down the aisle on the arm of my brother John, these four years dead.

odd, crazy, weird.