In A Box in My Bookshelf There Lives A Memory

When removed from its green cover with the fading yellow title sticker, the title is only legible on the binding, except to someone who’s looked at it as often as I have. I can make out two words among the jumble of dwarven runes along the edge: The Hobbit. It’s one of J.R.R. Tolkien’s classics, and a personal favorite, but not for the story. It is seventeen years old, and the book handled the most, yet the pages are not weatherworn or bent, its most battered component being a torn paper bookmark on page 104. When I leaf through its stiff, off-white pages, the first words I see are the handwritten ones before the title page: “Michael, Christmas 1993”. I’m well acquainted with the black print on each page, but when I read the words, I hear not the voices of Gandalf or Bilbo but the voice of my dad. Its slightly sticky picture pages have become a storage bin of memories. When removed from its green cover with the fading yellow title sticker, a little piece of my Dad escapes from its home in The Hobbit.