<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
A week or so ago, someone walked into my mom’s not-quite-opened store and asked her, “What’s this?” She glanced around at the half-filled book shelves, the piles and boxes of books, the cash register, the counter decorated with vintage book covers, and replied “It’s going to be a pet store.” Dumbass.<\/p>\n
Witnessing my mom as she prepares to open a bookstore of her own is nothing short of awesome. Not that I didn’t believe her when she told me she wanted to do it, not that I didn’t think she was capable of it. I just didn’t realize how it would enliven her, and the tiny town it’s about to inhabit.<\/p>\n
Mom’s home has always been book-filled. When we moved from the house I grew up in to the one she now shares with my step-dad, she gave away about (I’m totally guessing here) a third of the books we had laying around the house. We took the really good ones with us, of course, but we gave the others to who someone started their own bookstore with them. Even so, my step-dad has had to build more and more bookshelves to accomodate her ever-increasing collection. Mom’s like me, or rather, I’m like her: she reads a lot, sure, but mostly she just likes being surrounded by all those words. The smell, how books look on a shelf, the feeling of finishing a book and having your own collection to stare at while you consider which one you might read next. So the fact that she’s opening her own bookstore is both obvious and necessary.<\/p>\n
Next weekend, I’ll be going to Hometown to help with the opening. I’m so excited for mom, and I’m excited for the people in town who need and want this store. I’ve always felt that a bookstore makes a community. But it’s also like a little microcosm of its surrounding environment. (That’s part of what makes Elliott Bay and Powell’s so cool.) I fully expect Hometown to embrace mom’s store, which thrills me to no end and will help renew my belief in the idea that it can still be a cool place sometimes. But more than that, I’m inspired by my mom and her push to finally fulfill this dream.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A week or so ago, someone walked into my mom’s not-quite-opened store and asked her, “What’s this?” She glanced around at the half-filled book shelves, the piles and boxes of books, the cash register, the counter decorated with vintage book covers, and replied “It’s going to be a pet store.” Dumbass. Witnessing my mom as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hickopolis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hickopolis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hickopolis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hickopolis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hickopolis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hickopolis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hickopolis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hickopolis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hickopolis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}