Flashbacks in Paperback

I'm back in my childhood home, tending to my mother who has been under the weather. Much in the house has changed - the furniture has been upgraded since my childhood, and since my father's passing all the engineering journals and National Geographics have been boxed up and replaced with my mother's artbooks and novels. If I weren't living an ocean away, I'd pack up the NGs and take them home with me - the signature yellow spines are a prominent feature on my own bookshelves.

My father had subscribed to National Geographic since the late 50's, and had amassed a considerable collection while shuttling his growing family from Virginia to Taiwan, to New Jersey and Colorado, then eventually to Hawaii. They stayed in their boxes for many years, until the purchase of four upright mahogony bookshelves brought them out of confinement.

It was summer around my 9th or 10th year, and I was being disciplined for some youthful indiscretion, and my sentance was to stay in on a Saturday and unpack and organize the Geographics. Torture.

I surveyed the task at hand and realized I'd need to break them down into manageable portions to arrange them chronologically, so begain sorting them - first by decade, then by year, then in monthly order. I had piles spread out across the entire family room floor.

Once past the early years of black and white text covers (McSweeney's homage) and into the vivid photographic covers of the late 70's, I was hooked. I sat and read article after article, unfolded maps of the South Pacific, pulled out vinyl records of whale songs. My eyes were openned to what a treasure trove of fascinating information was encapsulated between those yellow covers. I'd leafed through the magazines before - but seeing them en masse, stacked in a serpentine timeline - I realized how much of the world was being delivered to me, literally right at my feet.

I've not been a subscriber to the magazine, myself - I move much too frequently. I purchase them now and again from newstands, when the articles are of particular interest. I dream, however, of one day having a grand library complete with a rolling ladder - and a bank of shelves housing my father's continuous collection of National Geographics.