Miracle on Main Street

Although I'd love to report that the World's Ugliest Dress is completed and altered and made into something great, I'm still working on that. Instead, I am about to relate the true story of a miracle!

Okay--no one's life was miraculously saved; no one saw a vision of angels; and this miracle won't win anybody sainthood. It's a miracle, nonetheless.

The story begins in 1987, with the birth of little Cassidy. On the way out of the womb, she grabbed a book off the...no, no, no. But she did love books and reading so, so much, right from babyhood.

She read and read.

She'll be TWENTY-FIVE in a couple of weeks, and she is still a voracious reader. 

One of our favorite books to read, together, back in the day, was Tommy at the Grocery Store. 

BEST CHILDREN'S BOOK EVER

We used to take this book out of the library all the time. Never did find it at a bookstore, but I can't remember if we even looked, back then. I'm a real library advocate, and library visits were always one of our favorite outings. 

Then Owen was born, and we moved a couple of hours further upstate. To a lovely village with a lovely library lacking the classic tome TOMMY AT THE GROCERY STORE. But all was not lost! The "big city" library to the west did have the book, and we borrowed it many times. Mucho enjoyment for the whole family. 

The children grew. Their reading tastes changed. The library lost the book, or discarded it, and it was no longer there when I went to check it out to read to my elementary students. I tried to buy it...and was told that it was out of print.

So began my fifteen-ish year quest, scouring library book sales and used book stores for Tommy. To no avail. Being a bit slow on the uptake, it didn't occur to me to check on Amazon until last week--and there it was! Or there THEY were--about a dozen copies of used Tommy at the Grocery Stores! I scrolled through the offerings, clicking to purchase one in "good" condition. 

Yesterday, there was a package in the mailbox. The Book! It had come from half way across the country, from a dealer in Indiana. I opened the package and savored the cover, its library-plastic cover a bit rough, its pages a bit torn, so very like the original copy that we'd read and loved at the Ellenville Public Library twenty plus years ago. A tear welled up in the corner of my eye.

I wondered about the provenance of my special find, so I flipped the book over to see what library it had come from.

And then, I really started crying.

It wasn't just A copy of Tommy.

It was OUR copy of Tommy.