The scent of muffins and some sort of flavored caramel coffee hits you the moment you walk through the front double doors. Then, the printing and bindery aroma of books and magazines adds a heady blend to the sensory feast that is about to begin.
While grazing along in the various sections, it can become very easy to forget that the real reason for the trip to Nirvana was to buy a travel journal for my son.
Titles of exotic import reach their delicate and fascinating fingers toward my gaze and direct my attention to the marvels that lie within their decorative slipcovers.
Less exotic but no less fascinating are the books that offer a dummy like me the chance to understand everything from naming a baby to piloting the space shuttle. Though the opportunity to do either of the aforementioned activities is clearly not on my daybook today, I could, for the price of the instruction book so thoughtfully prepared with me in mind, do either, or both since I am a modern woman capable of both bringing home the bacon and frying it up in a pan.
I glance wistfully through the stacks in the children's section wishing that childhood hadn't roared past so swiftly and I hope that I haven't managed to miss important milestones that will scar my children forever and guarantee lifetime employment to some shrink.
My favorite section is undeniably the travel section. I have been outside the U.S. a few times, but only to places that 'connect'. This, I have been reliably informed, does NOT count as international travel.
Be sure and tell that to the nice little cop in a box the next time you try to cross into Canada minus your passport. I am sure THEY consider it an international border even if you don't.
I love to see the brilliant photographs of places I have heard of but will likely never experience without the covers of a book providing the frame and sash to my window on the world. It isnt' that I don't want to travel.
I do.
I long to be the person with a passport that has so many stamps that extra pages have been required. I want to have travel worn luggage and conversation that speaks as easily of Paris in the sprintime as it does of pork chops in the skillet.
Ideally, I could be one of those literate and gifted people who is in demand as a program speaker who could wax eloquent on my latest trip to Senegal or Denmark. Though I have seen both on a map and in photographs on the internet, it would be cool beans to be the photographer that snapped the shot which graces the cover of this month's Geographic.
What brings this on?
Maybe the fact that my son will soon be a globe-trotting traveler who will indeed have little stamps inside his passport to indicate his worldwide experiences for everyone to appreciate.
They don't give stamps at the grocery store anymore.
Pity. I was pretty good at helping Momma collect them back in the day. And, oddly enough, we used some of those little stamps to buy luggage for a trip. Exotic America with snow in June near Berthoud Pass.
I can't wait to go back to Barnes and Noble. I hope the next time, I can go early, take smuggled in snacks and drinks in an oversized handbag as ugly as it is large and be forced to leave when closing time finally comes.
I love book stores. Their four walls contain the wealth and treasure of human possibility wrapped up in a nice little package.
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