{"id":48379,"date":"2013-03-15T15:10:37","date_gmt":"2013-03-15T19:10:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=48379"},"modified":"2013-03-18T12:43:32","modified_gmt":"2013-03-18T16:43:32","slug":"notes-from-a-bookshop-march-or-waiting-for-redbird","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/03\/15\/notes-from-a-bookshop-march-or-waiting-for-redbird\/","title":{"rendered":"Notes from a Bookshop: March, or Waiting for Redbird"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Picture<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

\u201cThe sky was darker than the water
\u2014it<\/i> was the color of mutton-fat jade.\u201d
\u2014Elizabeth Bishop, \u201cThe End of March\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

On more Saturday afternoons than not this month, I\u2019ve watched swirls of snow blow past the blue door of our bookshop. The parking lots in town have small mountains of mud-encrusted snow piled in their corners, monuments to the length of this winter. At home, the firewood is running low, our freezer is nearly empty of the lamb we split with our neighbors back in the fall, and the local farmer\u2019s market offerings have dwindled down to the last rutabagas from the root cellars. This has been a long winter, and everyone who comes into the bookshop looks a bit tired, drawn, impatient for spring and the promises that come with it.<\/p>\n

My favorite customer came in three weeks ago with his pregnant wife, her hair and eyes glowing, everything about her bursting with her own impending spring. Her husband is my favorite customer because he is my good luck charm\u2014on the bookshop\u2019s first Saturday he walked in and poked around until he found our poetry section. He gaped, not believing our little cache of modern poets. He revealed he was also a poet, had written his graduate thesis on Franz Wright<\/a>. He\u2019d grown up in town and I thought the presence of a local poet on one of our first days open was an auspicious sign. <\/p>\n

\"birdtypewriter\"<\/a><\/p>\n

He came in this time after the Saturday farmer\u2019s market at the Cooperage<\/a>, across the street. His wife had e-mailed ahead, hoping I\u2019d save a copy of the new Karen Russell, Vampires in the Lemon Grove<\/em>, and he found the new George Saunders, The Tenth of December<\/em>, on the shelf. The couple curled together while they wound through the shop, the way couples expecting their first child do, a subconscious protective stance, his body knowing how to be a father already. None of us knew it, but my good luck charm would lose his own father later that night. \u201cUnexpectedly,\u201d the obituary said, and \u201cfifty-two years old.\u201d They shared the same name.<\/p>\n

Poets are all about detail, and I wonder, will he always link Saunders to his father\u2019s death? Will he read the book for comfort, to lift himself out of the depths, or will it sit unopened on his desk, some totem of misfortune? In a recent interview<\/a>, Saunders talked about writing this new collection of stories from a place of luck, grateful for the love between him and his grown children, telling the interviewer: \u201cSort of like, Wow, I did not know that life could contain this much happiness.\u201d I hope these stories bring some small comfort to our poet friend.<\/p>\n

\"curlywillow\"<\/a>I learned of the death by searching for the obituary of another friend. Our framer, Peter English<\/a>, had died in his sleep from a heart attack that same week. He was the favorite framer of most of the artists in the area\u2014he\u2019d framed a drawing show<\/a> with thirty-seven works for my husband, Mark, and I recently had him frame two paintings by our three-year-old son. The last time Peter visited Moody Road Studios he dropped off some flyers for his frame shop and held Wolf Hall<\/em> like it was a piece of treasure. He\u2019d burned through it and missed the story so much he\u2019d taken to searching online for more about the history and time period.\u00a0His eyes lit up while talking about an NPR interview<\/a> he\u2019d recently heard with Hilary Mantel and he confessed to even having Wolf Hall<\/em>\u2013inspired dreams, losing himself in Mantel\u2019s landscapes. The only thing I\u2019d ever seen him more animated about was his own family.<\/p>\n

During an afternoon visit to our home last summer, the four of them\u2014Peter, tall and gentle; his sassy Irish wife, Cathy, striking smile always flashing; his two unnaturally beautiful, elf-like children\u2014seemed to move in a unit, fluid, always touching. Watching the family together was like watching a family of cats. At the bookshop that afternoon, Peter told me he hadn\u2019t wanted to work weekends at his own business, that he preferred to stay at home with the kids as much as possible while they were young. And he did. He was always so concerned about squandering time with them. He worried they would grow up too fast\u2014he didn\u2019t realize he\u2019d be the one leaving them. It wasn\u2019t their childhood that was short, but his time with them. He had it backwards, but it\u2019s as if he somehow knew.<\/p>\n

After Peter\u2019s death, I listened to the interview with Mantel again. In it, she explained why she loved writing about the past so much. In her family, \u201cthe dead were discussed along with the living, and the difference didn\u2019t really seem to matter \u2026 Instead of thinking there was a wall between the living and the dead, I thought there was a very thin veil. It was almost as if they\u2019d just gone into the next room.\u201d I had the same feeling at his wake, which happened to fall on his forty-ninth birthday. Peter wore a kilt; a string of rosaries wound through his fingers. The room was full of local poets and painters, photographers and printmakers, the same people who were always in his frameshop. Now, two weeks later, I still can\u2019t bring myself to take his flyers off our table.\u00a0 Friends come in and hold them, the same way he held Wolf Hall<\/em> that day.<\/p>\n

\"maryoliver\"<\/a>Books have a way of seeing us through these dark winter days. Another customer came in recently and found the new Mary Oliver, A Thousand Mornings<\/em>. My husband was working and she told him she was buying it for a friend who was dying of cancer. She was going to the girl\u2019s thirtieth birthday party in a few days. She\u2019d thought about buying her friend a print, perhaps a heart<\/a> or a flower<\/a>, but poetry, she said, felt more right.<\/p>\n

Alone in the store, I took the book down from the shelf the other day, thinking about this dying girl reading these poems, and I flipped to the title piece:<\/p>\n

\n

\u00a0A Thousand Mornings<\/b><\/p>\n

All night my heart makes its way
however it can over the rough ground
of uncertainties, but only until night
meets and then is overwhelmed by
morning, the light deepening, the
wind easing and just waiting, as I
too wait (and when have I ever been
disappointed?) for redbird to sing.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

*<\/center><\/p>\n

\"pride\"<\/a><\/p>\n

By mid-March, finally, the snow begins to melt and the kettles and ice-fishing huts are cleared from the lakes. Our personal spending freeze, however, is not thawing\u2014a few weeks earlier, my husband and I had agreed to hold off on more book orders, during a business breakfast at the diner down the street, where we write our meeting minutes on the back of the placemat. I start seeing only what\u2019s missing on my shelves instead of what\u2019s there, the books I can\u2019t replace until sales pick up in the spring: The Shipping News<\/em>, Emerson\u2019s essays, The Secret History<\/em>, Mrs. Bridge<\/em>, The Marriage Plot<\/em>, The Doctor\u2019s Wife<\/em>, I Saw a Peacock with a Fiery Tail<\/em><\/a>. But then a librarian comes in and finds my special Penguin Clothbound Classics edition of<\/a> Pride and Prejudice<\/em>\u2014she already has a copy, of course, but we both trace our fingers over the gorgeous woven swan wings on the hardback, sighing. She takes it.<\/p>\n

This morning, Bill from our neighboring Maude Alley<\/a> store Milkweed<\/a> comes into the bookshop and tells me he saw a red-winged blackbird at his feeder. The day is slow again and I think about Mary Oliver\u2019s redbird as I rearrange the shop, putting out a few garden books, hoping to conjure spring. At the end of the day, after packing up and reaching for the light switch behind the desk, I look toward our little window here and am stunned\u2014a few weeks ago, our friend Katharine Brown from Fox Hill Farm<\/a> gave us a cutting from her curly willow tree to brighten the place up and now, impossibly, the branches have bent toward the window and at the tip of each slender stalk is a burst of green. There isn\u2019t even any water in the vase. And yet, the cutting found the light and is trying to bloom.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe sky was darker than the water\u2014it was the color of mutton-fat jade.\u201d\u2014Elizabeth Bishop, \u201cThe End of March\u201d On more Saturday afternoons than not this month, I\u2019ve watched swirls of snow blow past the blue door of our bookshop. The parking lots in town have small mountains of mud-encrusted snow piled in their corners, monuments […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":479,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[419],"tags":[5945,2574,7993,10361,9735,265,970,2153,3265,1800,8617,10041,10357,10359,10358,10360],"class_list":["post-48379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-culture","tag-annie-proulx","tag-bookstores","tag-donna-tartt","tag-emerson","tag-evan-s-connell","tag-franz-wright","tag-george-saunders","tag-hilary-mantel","tag-jeffrey-eugenides","tag-karen-russell","tag-mary-oliver","tag-moody-road-studios","tag-notes-from-a-bookshop","tag-retail","tag-shops","tag-the-cooperage"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nNotes from a Bookshop: March, or Waiting for Redbird by Kelly McMasters<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"March 15, 2013 \u2013 \u201cThe sky was darker than the water\u2014it was the color of mutton-fat jade.\u201d\u2014Elizabeth Bishop, \u201cThe End of March\u201d On more Saturday afternoons than not this\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/03\/15\/notes-from-a-bookshop-march-or-waiting-for-redbird\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Notes from a Bookshop: March, or Waiting for Redbird by Kelly McMasters\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"March 15, 2013 \u2013 \u201cThe sky was darker than the water\u2014it was the color of mutton-fat jade.\u201d\u2014Elizabeth Bishop, \u201cThe End of March\u201d On more Saturday afternoons than not this\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/03\/15\/notes-from-a-bookshop-march-or-waiting-for-redbird\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-03-15T19:10:37+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2013-03-18T16:43:32+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/Picture-16.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"404\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"404\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Kelly McMasters\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Kelly McMasters\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"7 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/03\/15\/notes-from-a-bookshop-march-or-waiting-for-redbird\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/03\/15\/notes-from-a-bookshop-march-or-waiting-for-redbird\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Kelly McMasters\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/68a04c811f2b6c96ba9bb7fd4e7249c7\"},\"headline\":\"Notes from a Bookshop: March, or Waiting for Redbird\",\"datePublished\":\"2013-03-15T19:10:37+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2013-03-18T16:43:32+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/03\/15\/notes-from-a-bookshop-march-or-waiting-for-redbird\/\"},\"wordCount\":1416,\"commentCount\":8,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/03\/15\/notes-from-a-bookshop-march-or-waiting-for-redbird\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/Picture-16-300x300.png\",\"keywords\":[\"Annie Proulx\",\"bookstores\",\"Donna Tartt\",\"Emerson\",\"Evan S. 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