A Time to Turn to a New Page

It’s the one job that I saved for myself in the hurly-burly sorting, packing and hauling routine required to move my family’s worldly goods from our old home to our new.

The kids could handle the closets, my neighbor offered to pack up the kitchen, my boyfriend agreed to clean out the garage. But only I could sort through the hundreds of books we’ve amassed through the years.

I knew I couldn’t take them all; among the much-read and the unread were those that had served their need or outlived their usefulness and were destined for the box marked “Giveaways.”

But I also knew that the separation would be wrenching, that every book I abandoned would feel like a piece of myself left behind.

Because the trajectory of my life was chronicled on those shelves.

Whole chunks of my history reside in those books, not so much in the stories told in their pages, but in the way each volume represents old interests, dreams, values, fears . . . fragments of the inner life of a woman I can barely recall, who bears a striking resemblance to me.

*

It was a weeding-out process repeated many times during our marathon move.

I powered through my closet, discarding clothes from my past . . . skirts so short even my 14-year-old would be embarrassed to wear them, skin-tight pants, spike-heeled shoes. In the kitchen, I filled a box with castoff wedding presents--a crock pot, fondue set, electric wok . . . barely used in a kitchen where spaghetti and pancakes are the staples of our days.

Remnants of another life, a former me . . . I let them go without regret, clearing space for possessions yet to come, for reflections of the me yet to be.

But I am bound to my books much more intimately. They have been friends, teachers, travel guides; have comforted, humored, tormented me.

And as I disassemble my literary holdings, I wonder what a stranger perusing these shelves would think.

There are books bought on a whim and those long searched for. Books sent by their authors or borrowed from friends. Scholarly studies and pulp fiction. How-tos and how-not-tos. And row upon row of book club paperbacks, as far apart in perspective as “The Color Purple” and “Rabbit Is Rich.”

What sort of “me” would be conjured up from a bookshelf where “Waiting to Exhale” sits alongside “The Poems of Robert Frost”? Where “My Mother/Myself” shares space with “The Executioner’s Song”; “The Dubliners” with “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”?

I can trace the passage of time through these books. I reminisce as I sort, pondering the choices I’ve made, remembering all the people I used to be.

There is my ancient Roget’s, a relic from seventh grade, when I first discovered the magic of words and the power they had to shape our world. The price tag--35 cents--is still affixed to the cover, and my name, written in perfect penmanship, inside. This dog-eared paperback stays.

There is my batch of college textbooks--hauled across country and through decades--from an era when computers were a novelty and journalism seemed more calling than profession. They will be left behind.

I will heave the books about running and tennis, remnants of a long-ago life of leisure, when the quest for a perfect backhand and comfortable running shoes consumed my days.

And the stack of books from my introspective phase . . . “Games People Play,” “No Fault Marriage,” “Why Am I Afraid to Love?” I studied them with a ferocity that embarrasses me today, believing that the answers to life’s questions could be found in the expert advice between those pages.

*

The clothes have been hung in our new closets, our dishes unpacked and put away. And a new “me” has taken shape from the volumes preserved and stacked on my bookshelves.

Now “Father Loss” sits next to “Motherless Daughters”; “Confronting Racism” alongside “Searching for God”; and “Fear of Flying” has been replaced by “She’s Come Undone.” And a new portrait emerges, of a woman whose books are more companion than guide.

It is still an eclectic collection, hard to decipher, difficult to characterize. But the woman behind it is one I recognize . . . one whose search for truth and beauty is no longer confined to words on a page, who knows real life doesn’t always have happy endings, but who hasn’t given up on the naive belief that what we read can change our lives.

Sandy Banks can be reached by e-mail at sandy.banks@latimes.com.