Back to normal?

That is, we're back from a lovely graduation weekend in the Bay Area. The cat is back from the vet's, without her giant blue Elizabethan collar and 14 metal stomach staples and with a gargantuan appetite for anything YoungerKid drops on the floor. The car is back in the same city as us, after an elaborate practical joke (I can only assume, at least) played by the airline changed both the city of departure and of arrival for our flight home one hour before take-off; which meant I spent Monday taking the shuttle back across to the other side of the state to retrieve the car from the original airport parking lot. And the kids are back to all their familiar toys and books, of which they were apparently horribly deprived over the four days that we were gone.

Why the question mark in the title, then? The news that Cody's on Telegraph will be closing its doors on July 10. For those who love Berkeley and love books, this is undoubtedly shocking news, even if you admit, as you know you have to, that you probably did more buying at the 4th Street store or on Amazon of late anyway. Like every other graduate of Berkeley though, I have spent countless hours browsing the shelves (perhaps not every Cal grad shared my fondness for the pet care and mystery aisles in particular), enduring the strange sticky sweet smell of the floor, and carrying on feuds with various employees (actually, that one might also be just me.) Even now, when I pull out an old book and find that familiar black and white bookmark shoved inside, I remember settling myself down in some little corner of the store to read and eavesdrop on fellow shoppers intent on their own bizarre purchases, then tromping around Wheeler with my crinkly plastic sack full of fresh books, waiting for some professor to gaze distractedly at my burden and mutter tweedily: "Cody's, hmmmm? You'll make a fine academic some day." Academics and book-lovers have their status brands as surely as suburban teenagers and Park avenue matrons, and Cody's, the quirkiest, biggest bookstore serving the most chaotically brilliant U.S. public university--you bet them's fighting words--ranks right at the top. If people are now too frightened by the clumps of teenagers begging for beer money on the corner outside to make it in to the store, well, that's everybody's loss. I'm not sure I have time before the kids wake up to spin this out into a dissertation on how Barnes and Noble and poor urban planning are ruining American life, so I'll just say this. Maybe, as the Sunday New York Times Magazine reminds me, printed books don't matter anymore, even if the words inside matter more than ever. But, as a shopper, a reader, a collector, and a person increasingly nostalgic for her youth, I'm going to miss them when they go.

Last Night's Read-alouds: Lost and Found, Curious George, Blueberries for Sal ("I will be the Mama Bear, Mama"), Lottie's New Beach Towel, This Little Pirate, So What's it Like to be a Cat, Martha Blah Blah, and, for YoungerKid, Polar Bear Polar Bear What Do You Hear? one MILLION times.