My Mom loved books. She almost never watched television, but she was constantly reading a book. She got up each morning, read her Bible, had her cup of tea, and started cleaning the house. She made being a stay-at-home mom an art form. In the evenings, when dinner was done and the clean dishes were put away, she’d again sit down with a cup of tea and whatever book she was reading at the time. There was usually more than one.
Back “in the day”, the 80s, when the shopping mall was at its delicious peak, we’d travel an hour to the big city mall. My siblings and I would scatter to our favorite stores (Just Jeans, Camelot Music, Circus World…) and we’d find my Mom hours later still in the bookstore, right where we left her. My Dad, having gotten his fill of tool shopping in Sears, would camp out in the mall lounge nearest the bookstore, patiently waiting. He knew how much Mom adored books and rare it was she got to shop for them. He never complained about the time she spent in the bookstore, carefully selecting the best books for her and the perfect ones for gifts.