Just as strong as the old nest-building instinct is a new driving urge to divest. Whenever a tall person visits, I get them to clear off one of the top shelves. I’m packing for the library book sale because the kids don’t take much – not even their own old books --“they just won’t fit on the plane”.
Some books, though, I want to read one more time first. And it’s weird, going through volumes that have been untouched for half a century, like meeting my young self coming. Some feel entirely different today. It’s evidently true -- you never read the same book twice.
Anyhow, at the moment I’m in a paperback of The Rothschilds. You can see by the cover that it cost about a half-hours’ work at minimum wage in 1961. And I’ve hit a quote from old Gutele Rothschild, mother of the five sons who conquered Europe ’s finances and lived in huge chateaux, while she insisted, at the age of 94, in remaining at home in the ghetto of Frankfurt . When “a Highness offered his personal physician” who could take years off her life, Frau Rothschild said,
“People always think I want to grow younger. I don’t. I want to grow older.”
Right on. You go, girl!
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