I miss my books.  I miss having them around.  I miss the option of picking up a book and starting a new story.  Or picking up an old favorite and leafing through the pages to reread my favorite part.  I know I have too many books, especially for such a small space… and when the moving van finally arrives in California, I honestly have no idea where they will fit.  But I still miss their comforting physical presence.

I have two books right now: Boundaries in Marriage, by Henry Cloud and John Townsend, and The Annotated Sense and Sensibility, edited by David Shapard.  And my Kindle.  But I just haven’t been reading much.  I think I am still unwinding from my recent anxiety.  I am breathing easier and sleeping better and dreaming nothing at all.  Which is a wonderful departure from my pre-move existence, which mostly consisted of phantom to-do lists and restless nights and always, always feeling like something hanging over my head was about to drop at any second.  So although I am feeling much more relaxed, I still have not quite unwound enough to read again.

Maybe it is because I am still living out of a suitcase, with my makeup and medicines and other necessities set up on a cardboard box.

Maybe it is because I eat, sleep, sit, and lounge on a blow-up mattress because there are no tables or chairs in the apartment yet.

Maybe it is because I wake up each morning and don’t quite want to face the day, because I know it will be full of new things that I will have to navigate and figure out and accept as part of my new life.  But all these “maybes” are temporary.

One day—maybe a couple of months from now, maybe a year from now—I will wake up and this place will feel like home.  But I know I can’t wait until then to start reading again.  So maybe—just maybe—I will venture out today with my book and find a nice, quiet coffee shop to spend a few hours remembering the joy of reading.