Mother's Day

Mother’s Day was perfect this year. It was the first year that The Boy fully understood the idea of a special day for celebrating mothers. He put a touching amount of thought into buying me a present and he worked hard to make sure my day was a lovely one. I was promised a pancake breakfast and a chocolate cake for after dinner but neither eventuated. I was, however, the joyful recipient of a garden gnome courtesy of the primary school Mother’s Day stall. The Boy handed it over, bouncing on his toes with excitement, bursting with pride at his purchase which he knew I would absolutely love to bits. And he was right of course – how could I not be delighted by something that was given with so much love?

We put together one of our traditional slacker's picnics (a large bag of Baker’s Delight stuff and some bottles of flavoured milk) and went out to Wentworth common for lunch. The Chicken is always at her best when she is outdoors and had a wonderful time crawling around, investigating other people’s picnics, and pointing out every plane that flew overhead. The boy is still thrilled at his newfound ability to ride his bike without training wheels and decided to put it to the ultimate test by riding up the large hill that overlooks the common.

It was lovely to spend the whole day together as a family like that – a whole day blissfully free of the simmering frustration and crankiness that sleep deprivation has made commonplace around here recently.

Bookplate Dilemma

I have a large, quirky, eclectic collection of books. Two categories of books come into my life. Some I buy, read and pass on and others - the special ones - become part of my beloved personal library. I will probably keep them forever.

About a week ago I bought a couple of packets of bookplates. I love the historical idea of bookplates – the notion that books were of such value that their ownership was a thing to boldly declare. Bookplates, like the books they adorned, were works of art, frequently created personally for the owner. They marked each item as treasured, and united an assortment of books into a library.

My bookplates aren’t handmade or personalised of course, but they are aesthetic, and the idea of labelling my library appeals to me. I looked forward to finding a quiet moment to put my beautiful bookplates into my treasured books, but now that the moment has come I have found myself hesitating.

They are lovely fresh out of the packet, but once I stick them on will they look like the sort of labels kids put on their schoolbooks? I certainly wouldn’t like that at all. What if, in ten years time, what seems like a harmless indulgence now feels like an affectation, defacing my books? Should I put the first one into one of ‘my’ books, or into something less important so that it doesn’t matter if I don’t like the effect? What would I then do with the book that I had claimed as my own?

I’m sure I’ll sort it out.

I know that life is sweet when I have time to ponder the finer points of bookplating my library!