Come for Supper: Food and Books II

Before we open the door to our guests, we need to make sure they have a horizontal surface on which to rest their food. Recipe sparring aside, this is the most traumatic part of cleaning for company. It’s clean here. We clean regularly: scrub floors, wash rugs, dust. But we do not move the books.

Books sit in towers on every flat surface. Two stacks have taken up residence behind the television (why waste that space?); books nest on the extra dining room chairs; books I am currently reading own the sofa-side table and books he is reading sit on the other side table. Since we have no house plants, there are four stacks of books on the microwave. We cannot move books to the bookcases until the books have been read, utilized for class, and possibly passed on to others to make room for more books. Why? We won’t know where they are.

Admittedly, there have been times when I wandered the house asking my son and husband, “Have you seen my book? I’ve lost my book,” describing its cover color size. Invariably my son replies, “Take another one, there are enough,” gesturing with his hand toward the several hundred waiting to be read.

Books are sorted, by occasion when they were found if not by topic or author. No matter how much I looked forward to them, for years having company meant moving stacks of books to the back room, from which I seemed never able to find the ones I most wanted. Time provided a solution to this problem.

Company is now graded by book-worthiness and comfort level. If you are new and a judging kind of person, we’ll offer to meet you at a neutral restaurant where the only books are menus, whisked away before the bread basket arrives. If we’re more familiar with you, we are able welcome you as we are. We don’t feel the need to move any books, though we will clear the kitchen table. And if you understand us, you know why the space for your drink is only large enough for the glass of whatever you are drinking, and that glass is set next to a pile of books.