Book Return

by The Lender
USA

Moving west after attending university, I lived in a smallish town in the middle of Washington State. It was hot and dry in the summer, surrounding agricultural farms were supported by gravity-fed irrigation water from the Cascade Mountains. It was cold with crunchy snow underfoot in winter, with definite spring and fall.

It was the mid 1970s. There was a college they’ve since upgraded to Central Washington University. I ran with a creative crowd, mostly attending the college. We also socialized with a few younger college professors, including from the Ethnic Studies and Sociology Departments.

Some of my friends took modern dance classes and gave performances. One friend owned a bicycle shop downtown. Once I purchased a bicycle there with a guarantee tag stating, “15 minutes or 15 centimeters, whichever comes first”. Some of our friends had grown up locally, so we had ties to local farming families.

Heck, in small towns, you’re tied to almost everybody, almost every institution. That’s the beauty of small town life. It fosters deep relationships because you see people often — and also fosters diversity of relationships. Since people “just like you” are few, most people have diverse friendships.

One gal I met was Diane. She was getting a degree in Elementary Education. We knew each other a little — our social circles overlapped, but saw each other rarely.

Diane once borrowed a book: “The Golden Egg Book” by Margaret Wise Brown and Leonard Weisgard. It was a talisman book from my childhood, with gorgeous, elaborate illustrations, and a poignant story about a lonely bunny who finds friendship. My parents had read that book so many times to myself and my siblings, the cover was tattered. The book was magical to me, cherished for its precious memories.

One day there was a knock at my door. Diane said, “I’m moving to California, and I’m returning “The Golden Egg Book”. I really like it, and I knew I could take it with me, because I knew you’d have forgotten who had it, all these months later. I kept feeling too busy packing to take the time to bring it over. But I didn’t want to do that, because I knew how much it meant to you. So, here it is.”

I still tear up every time I tell this story. I’d spent hours listening to lectures about morality, why it’s imperative to do the right thing. But that one small event changed my life. It demonstrated what living a moral life is, that it involves sacrifice at inconvenient times.

When I’m faced with everyday moral choices, I know what I have to do. I have to make the kind of choice Diane did, so I can live with my own conscience, and so the other person feels the relief I did.

Thanks to Diane, my own children were able to sink into that magical story, gaze at the mesmerizing illustrations, and turn the pages of the very same “Golden Egg Book”.