For over a week I have been having trouble sleeping. I am awake at 2 a.m., envisioning where in my tiny Hyundai I will put my camping gear, or the huge cooler my friend Jessie got for me at a thrift store, or my box of audio cables. I even made a diagram. 

All packed!

So, even though I still have three more full days in New Mexico, I packed the car today. Minus a few boxes of beloved books, it all fits – and thank goodness for media mail. Now I get to live out of my car for a few days to test out the system. 

One of the homecoming milestones I am most looking forward to is reuniting my two libraries – the one I have built here in New Mexico, and the one that is still at my parents’ house in Vermont. The one I have developed here started with a handful of novels and Harold Bloom’s beauty of a book. Since then, it has turned into a small collection containing texts of anthropology, midwifery, labor support, osteology, and feminist theory. My library in Vermont is very different: classic literature, theatrical plays, YA fiction.

These two collections tell volumes (pun intended) about who I have been during different chapters of my life. The girl who left Vermont at age 18 is not the woman who is returning at age 25. I want to know what these two libraries look like side by side on the shelves. I am curious how they will complement each other and round each other out. And, like any other book junkie, I can’t WAIT to re-organize them.