On Coming Home to My First “Home”

Proust’s famous madeleine opened a trap door in his imagination.  Through it he saw the arc of his life, in infinite and emotionally-rich detail.

The holy often arrives through the senses.  Imagine, then, a clean, well-lighted space redolent of book bindings, paper, dusted shelves, wooden tables, a vase of greens.  Imagine a young woman ,homesick for something she couldn’t name: a sanctuary that felt like home in a new place far from home.

Imagine, too, the homecoming sort of solitude you feel deep in your bones when you step into a shrine, or a field as first sun is slanting across new hay.  You are in a thin place, a place that feels like it has been waiting for you, even if it is the first time you have been there.

One of my holy places is a bookstore nestled in the Western Massachusetts village of South Hadley, its tables vibrant with newly published books check-to-jowl with classics seductively beckoning.

As an introspective freshman, feeling like a poor fit for my social, sophisticated classmates that first fall semester, I found my way to The Odyssey Bookshop close to the small green in the center of town, a welcoming space crammed full of books on two floors, overseen by the most ebullient of book lovers and merchants, Romeo Grenier.

Past midlife by then, Romeo was the maître d’hotel, so to speak, overseeing his realm with panache, confidence, an encyclopedic memory, and utter devotion.  I would learn in time that his fame had spread far and wide by the time I arrived.  Romeo had achieved a sort of guru status among booklovers and sellers the world over.

How often did I sequester myself among the shelves, taking in the comfort of so many words, occasionally eavesdropping on faculty from the English department commenting on a new edition of Shakespeare, or gossiping about favorites and duds with one another.  These were hours of oceanic bliss for me, an avid reader from a family of readers, a supplicant to that vaunted existence to which I aspired:  a life of the mind.

Romeo made books more alive, if this were possible, to my bookworm self.  He made the act of literature accessible.  He made it seem, well, possible.

I became a writer thanks in part to Romeo and his bookstore.  First, as a newspaper editor and literary magazine contributor for my campus publications, then as a reporter for the local city paper not far away.  I left the Valley for other places, but I took with me the seeds sown and nurtured in the hours I spent at the Odyssey – Romeo’s devotion to quality, excellent, conviviality, encouragement .  I remembered, and I wrote — and wrote and wrote: articles, books, reflections, blogs, columns…and am still writing.

This Friday, May 23, I will once again enter The Odyssey, in town for a college reunion for the first time in decades.  Romeo is no longer there; his daughter now runs the shop, carrying on his legacy.

In the back seat of my car will be copies of  my new book of poetry, Mending Prayer Rugs.  In many ways, this will feel to me like the return from of a long and well-lived pilgrimage.  I wish Romeo were here in the flesh to greet me, as I set up a space on one of the front tables for a signing.  But he will be, alongside my younger self, full of thanks and tribute for what his clean, well-lighted, lively sancctuary gave me when I most needed: a home in the world.

“Welcome young scholar and reader,” he always seemed to be saying, to me and to everyone who walked through the door. “You have come to the right place.”