My "year off"

Dear Reader -  I'm not quite sure how it came to this; but, somehow or another, we've ended up with a perception of "real" that connects most tangibly for many of us to the ethereal world of the digital. Things aren't really real unless we feel like we can touch them all the time, no matter where our fingers lie.

Now our little shop is situated on the main street of what's too often called "the first town in the first state." There's a whole'lotta tangible going on here in Lewes. But there's a whole'lotta ethereal, too, what with our grip on history and legend and tradition. biblion skitters around the edges of all that. We live in the only Italianate building here in Sussex County (per Lewes's leading historian, Hazel Brittingham) - a building where a myriad of beloved businesses set up shop, where members of the Coast Guard took their meals during WWII, where the Brittinghams fed Lewes's teenagers in the 50s, and where pre-teens hid behind St. Peter's walls and threw odd things at the bigger kids as they went to hang out at Mitchell's in the 70s (per Ed and Dickie). History happened here - big H and little h.

 

(photo by Mike Mahaffie)

But mostly we embody the whole present tense, "bricks and mortar" thing. We're all about the magic that can only happen when we're physically together in a space - together with each other, together with books, together with ideas. The five of us who work here see it every day. Magic.

As Ricky Ricardo would say, I've got some 'splainin' to do: it's been a long, long while since I've given much attention to this ethereal, digital world. But I didn't realize just how much our online presence was missed 'till two things happened: I stumbled across our first "review" on the Internet (which kindly apologized for our pathetic Web presence and said that we were cool anyhow - thank you Leah, K, for your kind words and for taking the time to share your thoughts!), and I had a guest all but beg me to come back to blogging (not really sure what I could've been saying that'd warrant that, but it was nice to know I was missed). These encounters made me realize that I'm ready to be "real" on the Internet yet again.

So where have I been? I've been riding through what has turned out to be my 13-year old daughter's last year at home. You see, Miss C is heading off to boarding school next year for her freshman year (or 3 as she'll be known at her high school).

You don't often think of going through the "empty-nest" thing at 13, but here we are. Miss C had an amazing year visiting schools, taking her SSATs, getting into schools, and choosing the one that was most C-like. She's in heaven. And I'm in heaven for having chosen to drop out of everything non-essential (even the things that I thought were essential, like musical performance) and having spent the year with her - mostly doing "nothing" together. Heaven, indeed.

She "graduated" from The Jefferson School a couple weeks back and is spending this week at her other home in Brooklyn, so I have a bit of elbow room to get back into the groove of writing to you. So much has happened and is going to be happening - so much fun, so much good. We're blessed, and I'm looking forward to sharing it all with you.

Commencing (with Miss C)  - Jenny

P.S. And in honor of Miss C's grin at her photo-snapping mama and just 'cause we can't help but share some of the tunes that we love to play at the shop (and I've been playing the heck outta his album), here's some tunage via Mr. Rawls . . .