Moving Quintilian

T minus 14 days and counting. This picture reminds me of what it is like for us to move. Books, books, books. So far we have packed 13 boxes of books. We still have to pack up all of Brady's cookbooks, which will likely be another 2 or so boxes. There will be a box for all of Ellie's books. Probably 2-3 boxes' worth are at Brady's office. This is our reduced state after selling off some textbooks online throughout the year, and taking two very full boxes of books we agreed we could part with to the local used book store.

Except Quintilian. Everyone's favorite Roman rhetorician. Well, maybe not everyone's, but that's a debate for another time. I own every volume of his Institutio Oratoria in practically perfect condition. It's a leftover from my grad school days, history of rhetoric class. Each little red book, complete with dust jacket, has the text in Latin on one page, the English translation on the facing page. And I read it. (Just the English pages, but still.) The set probably cost me a couple hundred dollars new, should have gotten at least a hundred used, but the people at the used bookstore only offered around $25. For the whole set. So I said I'd just keep those books. I admit that I hardly remember the specifics of the text. I seriously doubt I will ever read it again. And if I didn't already own it and saw the set on sale for $25, I probably would not buy it. But somehow it was worth that to me to keep the books. I read them. I own them. I can look at the books and have them. So right now the count is 13+ boxes of books and Quintilian.

I have been much more ruthless when it comes to other belongings. I have a pile of stuff to go to Goodwill, even after our major purge for last year's move. As I was packing beautiful crystal vases we received as wedding presents I wondered if I had wrapped and padded them enough or if they might break in the move. Then I just shrugged and kept packing, thinking if they break, they break. I'm so not sentimental about some things.

It probably seems a frivolous thing for us to keep so many books considering we don't have a house to put them in. We are still apartment dwellers, about to reduce to less than that even as we get ready to move in with family. It might make more sense to just sell all the books and buy electronic readers of some sort--one small box to carry them both and call it good. But sorting through and packing the books I got nostalgic. I remembered the classes I read them for, the people who were in those classes, the work I didn't do because I was reading those books. I found old class schedules tucked into textbooks, cards I thought were funny and used as bookmarks, and a note I had written asking Brady to bring me a lunch to school during the first year we were married (I hear some husbands get love notes put in lunches their wives make for them . . .).

I remembered when Brady and I were dating; neither of us had a car, so we took a lot of long walks. As we walked and walked, we would talk about our future, what we wanted to do and be, what we wanted for our kids. I remember one night when Brady said he wanted to have a library in his house someday--I knew I had found "the one." A lot of those lofty dreams from nearly a decade ago (gulp!) have not worked out exactly as we planned them. They've taken a lot longer to reach than we thought, and some may not ever happen. We don't have a house yet. We don't have a career yet. We are still in school. We don't have the big family we thought we'd have by now. But we have Ellie. And we have well over 13 boxes of books for our library. And Quintilian.

P.S. In other happenings, Ellie turned 8 months old. The camera batteries needed recharging, so I will post on that soon--don't worry grandmas.