Loss.

When I was twelve, my parents took my brother and I into Manhattan for the day. It was an impromptu trip – my father was never much for visits into New York very often. But the weather was nice, it was a warm, gorgeous November Sunday and I believe my mother sold the idea with such vigor no one could help but say yes. Of course, you've never had to ask me twice about a trip into The City. I imagine the minute she suggested the idea over breakfast, I was already lacing up my shoes, making sure my outfit was “city appropriate” and climbing into the back seat of her car, ready.

I doubt it will shock you when I tell you that I remember many of the details of that day trip, down the outfit I was wearing as our family of four weaved up and down Fifth Avenue. We played tourist mostly, wandering into FAO Schwartz and The Plaza, oohing and aahing over the window displays at Saks and Barneys. It was on a bit of a whim, then, that we all wandered into Doubleday Books on 5th and 57th.

If I’d been in a bookstore that stunningly beautiful before, I didn’t remember it. Until that moment, I had, for the most part only been familiar with smaller bookstores, the likes of which bordered my hometown. Suddenly, I found myself in a palace of sorts, with books around every corner. With its dark mahogany shelves – shelf after shelf! - and entire floors there were books for as far as the eye could see. Aah, here, I thought. This was MY New York. Here was the spot where I would wander someday, when I lived here and called The City home. I imagined whiling away a rainy Sunday afternoon among the stacks, immersed in the worlds of poets, writers, and literature. Later, after we made our purchases and found our way to the exits, my father remarked “They just don’t make bookstores like this one, anymore. It’s a classic.”

Six years later, when I was a freshman at Boston University, I found myself often and utterly homesick. When my family came to visit that first October during parent’s weekend, my mother and I took the T downtown. We wandered through the area, a place I’d not yet explored on my own. As we rounded a block, there in all of her book selling glory was a multi-level Borders. “Do you want to go in a minute and look around?” Mom asked. We stepped inside, noting their entryway displays and signs. Mom and I separated, she heading to the magazines and periodicals, me back toward the fiction section. I wandered the stacks, took note of the arching windows and grand layout. Here I was again, with multiple floors, stacks, shelves of books. While it wasn’t quite as majestic as what had come to be my beloved Doubleday Books in New York, it was really darn close. And for the first time that semester I thought I might be able to make it here in Boston. Because I’d found this bookstore. Because it felt like something familiar in a city and a school full of nothing but unfamiliar.

Today I read that Borders will be shuttering the remainder of its stores, that the business is going under, failing. To tell you that the article I read in The Wall Street Journal nearly broke my heart would be obvious, and I imagine you’ll believe me when I mention I was close to tears as I shared the article with my family. This evening, after work, I wandered over to that Borders, the one I’d leaned on and come to love so many years ago. I walked in and looked up to my left, watching the people in the coffee shop area, recalling the hours I spent lingering in that same area hunched over my textbooks, studying, memorizing for hours on end. I walked through the magazine section, perused the bestseller shelves, and stared at the markdown table before wandered into the back fiction section, the same spot I’d wandered all those many years ago, at 18. I had no agenda, no pressing need for a particular book. Still, I wandered the isles, running my hands up and down book spines, silently wondering how many more visits I could squeeze in before the front doors are locked permanently, wondering what will become of the space, wondering how many more bookstores I will be forced to mourn in the coming years.

They say that change is good. And yet there are times when I wonder, times when I’d beg to differ.