Single Parenthood & I: How a bookcase helped me find myself again

When books have been a big part of your life, having them hidden from you feels like losing part of you, except in my case, it happened almost by stealth.

One of the things about going from having no money to having some money, is that you have catching up to do. Over the last month, I have made this journey. It may only be temporary. The lot of the freelancer is fundamentally unsafe. But at the time of writing I don’t have to worry about paying the rent at the end of the month.

And boy, there has been catching up to do. Both of my kids’ beds collapsed, so I had to both buy and assemble replacements for them. My older kid’s wardrobe suffered the same fate. Just a complete, fundamental collapse. I didn’t really understand why this should be happening right now, but it would appear that the maximum lifespan of furniture these days is five years.

Now, I am not rich. My furniture shop of choice is a charity shop in the town centre. But sometimes they really come up trumps. At the end of last summer, I got a lovely nest of tables for £20.

I’d been popping in there for a couple of weeks on the off-chance, and on this occasion they finally had what I wanted. A cute, blue wardrobe, perfect for a kid.

And a bookcase.

Now look, I can explain.

My books have been under my bed for at least the last ten years. In truth, when I first got married, we didn’t have any furniture and our budget stopped short of a bookcase, and I hadn’t thought about it since. I just shoved them under the bed and clambered underneath it when I needed one. When I read a book, it was on my Kindle.

I didn’t like this arrangement, but I’d had to get on with it, and then it just became the way things were. But then I started to think about it. I need a bookcase. There was one corner of the living room in which was positioned a quite revolting lilac chair, which would make a perfect space for one.

It was something that I’d suppressed, really, but books mean a lot to me. I was an obnoxiously early reader, cordoned off from the rest of the class with a book at five years old while other, more normal, kids learned to read. (Why yes, yes I was a classic burnout, too. More than once, since you ask.)

But books were that thing that I did. I apparently went through a phase of being obsessed with the A-Z of London, to the extent that my mum once claimed that I gave someone who’d stopped to ask her directions, with the words, “And this little voice piped up from the pushchair…”

I alway had one on the go. I read all 21 of the Famous Five books by Enid Blyton, though it felt weird because it wasn’t made clear that were they from not only a past that I didn’t recognise as being in any way familar, but also a completely different social class to me. Even at the age of seven, I found the name “Aunt Fanny” hilarious. As one should.

From about the age of ten on, I had a typewriter on my desk wherever I went for the next 13 years. When it went, it was to be replaced by a desktop computer. But as regular readers will be aware, I bought one last year, and I’ve only written about three letters with the damn thing in the last nine months, so it just sits in my bedroom, being a nice thing (and an extra thing to have to dust).

I continued reading right the way through my teens and twenties. I’d have phases when I would be getting through a book a week, every single week. It probably was a combination of writing and having a smartphone that did for that habit. And I have my little peccadilloes. I kind of half-collect Giles cartoon books, and if you give me a football annual, I will read it cover to cover, and I will keep it.

I was prepared to compromise. The financial position isn’t so great that I don’t still have to make cost my first, second and third priority. But then I saw it. Solid wood - I have no idea what sort, but it’s dark - and almost big enough to fit all my books. And for reasons best kept to themselves, it was reduced from £160 to £45.

With a £30 same-day delivery charge (it would have been the same no matter what day, that they could deliver that afternoon was just the cherry on the cake), it was £105 for a wardrobe for my kid and freedom for my books. They delivered it that afternoon, and the delivery guy very helpfully allowed me to take the dreadful lilac chair to go in older kid’s bedroom, alongside his new bed.

There wasn’t quite enough room for all my books, but then again I had a lot of garbage, so I was able to trim them down quite neatly. The overspill are currently outside my house in a box. Some - but by no means all means all - of them have been taken. The rest will, depending on condition, either go to the charity barn a ten minute walk from my house or into the recycling.

And it fits in perfectly with the rest of my living room, which is mostly otherwise dark browns and black. My next DIY job is to stain that £20 coffee table. I have the materials for it. The thing that stopped me on my days off this week was the weather. The risk of rain was too great, and I need a day when it’s completely sunny.

Regular readers will also be delighted to know that I have finished the top end of the garden, thanks to a second trip to the tip on the same day as I got the wardbobe and bookcase; yes, we went back there first thing in the morning, meaning that I got all this done in one day. The only problem is that there’s a family of woodpigeons—absolute units, the pair of them—nesting in the bush to the left of the below photo, and mama ain’t moving for no-one, so that’s any more deforestation out the window for a while.

But it does feel a bit like something more than that. A piece of me is back, as well. Just being in the direct presence of my books has meant more to me than I was expecting it to. It’s been good for my mental health. I feel, and not time for the first time of late, as though a weight has been lifted from my shoulders. I keep wandering over, flicking through a few and remembering them, and then putting them back.

The kids haven’t touched them. They also have a little bookshelf upstairs in Old Child’s room, and they understand the value of books. We read together, at least a couple of nights a week. Yes, I do use voices. But they also know that I write for work. They know that reading is important. They only had to add two plus two to get to the answer that the books are deserving of careful handling. So far, they’ve kept a distance.

This is how you find youself, I guess. A bookcase is a simple thing that is giving me happiness by being in my life. It makes the living room feel mine, it feels like a piece of me has grown back. It all feels a little bit more mine. I feel like I’ve had cause to recall a part of me who’s been away for too long.

These are the things that I’ve been doing, of late. I decided I wanted a watch (and this is whole other story, because it turns out that buying a watch is far more complicated than I thought it would be), so I bought a 1991 Swatch, which I love to bits. I’m back to working out and exercising again. I’m looking after myself.

There is something fundamentally debasing about money, but none of that means that aspiring to a better life is a bad thing. If I can stay where I am right now, even on my own, I’ve got half a chance that I can make all three of our lives a little better. We’ve worked hard, we’re good people, and yes, at times we’ve been treated badly. We deserve this. For once, I’m going to allow myself to believe it.

Accompanying Image by Greg Reese from Pixabay