Jabblog was right in her comment, it's odd having bear home. It's wonderful and comforting and reassuring to have him home, but it's odd. I've got used to one way of doing things, with him many miles away, and now I'm getting back in the habit of him being home, but not quite the same as it was before. After all, he's lived away from home as an adult for nearly a year. And he's done brilliantly.
Now he's home, it's not exactly the same as when he went away. I like to think that DH and I always treated him with respect as an individual and allowed him to make choices. He's certainly just as respectful and considerate as he's always been. It's just that he's definitely an adult. Today was something of a reminder.
Bear has been clearing out his books. He's getting into reading for pleasure. He's been reading things like Around the World in Eighty Days and the originals of Dracula and Frankenstein. I introduced him to Postscript Books, which perhaps I shouldn't have done if I was a truly responsible parent. They do a lot of remaindered books at great prices, including some amazing academic books, and they were running a three for two offer on cheap classics at the end of last term, so bear loaded up on copies of Dickens and such like - he's so much better read than I am!
He realised that he was out of shelf space and the two full bookcases and one half bookcase were already jammed before he added anything, so he's had something of a clear out and got rid of a lot of books that he got when he was younger. I took a pic of one for a memory keepsake.
It's just a young kid's book, about a cat that mooched dinners from six different families, which was so much fun, and we read it to him so many times when he was little. It's obviously not something that he wants to keep, but it made me smile. Anyway, he overfilled three big bags for life and I'll be taking them to the Salvation Army. There are some books from when he was very young, and a few more that are nearer young teen, and quite a collection of study guides for his GCSEs.
He hadn't cleared out his shelves since Covid and so it's no wonder that they were overflowing. I've always bought lots of books for him. When he was little I bought books by the armful. The now defunct Book People would have sales where I could order sets of ten easy learn-to-read books that were maybe a dozen pages long and cost very little and I indulged. One year I think that I got him over a hundred of these easy reader books as part of his Christmas/Birthday present, and he very much enjoyed them.
During Covid, we went through them and took the best ones to donate to bear's old primary school. We took bags and bags of them, probably a few hundred as they were all the early readers that were only a few pages long and I'd been buying them in large quantities since before he started school. I remember that it was during lock down and we left the bags in a corner so that they could wait the three days or so that was thought to make them safe. It was the step between primary school and high school. This feels like the step between teen and adult.
It's so good that he's home.
Hugs and good health to all.
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