Of a Certain Age: Library not quite what I imagined

Musings amid the mess ...

I have my library, Dr. Simpson: When I was in high school and could be depended on never to have a date on a Friday or Saturday (or a Monday or Wednesday), I sometimes would baby-sit for the family of Ted Simpson, an engineering professor at USC.

As I remember, Dr. Simpson was a bookish-looking man. He wore glasses and had a ready smile, a hint at his sense of humor. I read somewhere later that he had engineered a cockroach zapper out of dowels and rubber bands or some such, which seemed in keeping with what I perceived as a whimsical nature.

When he picked me up to go to the Simpson house, and when he took me home again, we would talk about our dream homes and the rooms we would build if he were not but a teacher and I, just a high school girl. Our fantasies always involved libraries.

Well, I have my library now, though it isn’t the grand room I had painted in my mind or in words for Dr. Simpson. There are no skylights, no umpteen-story walls requiring ladders on casters for access.

I spent a day last week schlepping upstairs my many volumes from hidey holes throughout the house. (I’m sure I’ve missed some.)

The next day, I arranged the volumes on what I suspected might be too few shelves: only 42 plus cabinets with hidden space.

Novels are alphabetized by author. Irish and African-American works are on their own shelves, as are poetry and books signed by their authors. Reference and religion stand side by side: the worldly and the spiritual forever bound together. Interspersed among the books are ceramics pieces the kids have sculpted through the years.

And there is room for much more!

The room, when it is finished, will be Cliff’s and my private retreat within the house — the door has a lock, a luxury we have, heretofore, been denied. We will watch BBC series, I will plan lessons, and we will read in this room in our comfortable leather chairs. The dog will doze and the cat will climb.

The only thing that could add to my enthusiasm for the retreat is if Dr. Simpson could come by to see it.

Since the house is all torn up with remodeling, re-plumbing and rewiring, and we have no idea what critters are among the contractors day to day, he can even bring his roach zapper.

“Old Lady With Thin Skin” Injury No. 42: I am looking at my right arm and wondering who in the world has skin the color of the “flesh-tone” bandage affixed there. (I barked my arm on who-knows-what trying to walk through our upside-down house.)

The bandage is a sort of orange-brown, a color — as the forestry service says of its mint-green trucks — “not found in nature.” Or in anyone’s skin that I know of.

Maybe the bandage maker decided that as long as it couldn’t make a reputably shaded “skin-tone” product for the entire African-American population, it would avoid trying to please the Caucasians, Hispanics and Asian/Pacific Islanders among us and just come out with something that would contrast rather unpleasantly with all skin.

It’s a weird form of equality, I suppose, but I think I approve.

The kindest cut: The other day, a huge cardboard box arrived by FedEx. Ah, the new shredder we had ordered! Now I can cut — or the shredder can — unwanted documents, CDs and so forth into tiny, rippled confetti that will be impossible to vacuum up should it escape the shredder receptacle.

In the weeks we had mused about what to order, I thought about the Old Days, when people threw their trash out in big plastic bags that nosey reporters would dig through, if the former owner of the detritus was prominent in some way. (Did they do this to Gary Hart? Henry Kissinger? I can’t remember.)

I wondered what people might find in our trash, if I didn’t fold, mutilate, spindle or shred it.

Here’s a sampling: Crystal Light single-serving lemonade packets, about four a day. Many receipts for beads, findings and chains — I have taken up jewelry-making, a sort of Lego for the older crafter. Cartons from microwaveable popcorn, microwaveable stew, microwaveable ... well, you get the idea. Junk mail inviting me or Cliff or one of the kids to open a new credit card account, refinance the mortgage, re-roof the house, mow the lawn, paint the house, plumb the house or whatever the house.

Oh, boy, am I going to have fun with this shredder, even though I won’t be making confetti out of anything more than old research notes — goodbye, Thomas Pynchon! — and the “keep for your records” parts of bills paid.

If I’m ever famous, or even infamous, little will remain to tell the kind of life I led. Except the kids, of course, and they spend all their waking hours trying not to be embarrassed by me.

My reputation, such as it is, is safe.