happy birthday bsb!

i didn't write yesterday for two reasons. one is easy to explain, i was at cogans all day serving up pizza pie, from 11:30 until 9:00 and it was exhausting. i fell asleep in the leather chair brought home from the store almost before i was done eating. that chair was the closest i came to the store yesterday, i couldn't go anywhere near it.

on march 18th, 2002, we first opened the store in port norfolk. it was wonderful. we had friends there helping us unload boxes and really just finally flung open the doors at about 5:30 at night, to a group of neighborhood customers that had been waiting for us to open. they had been stopping by every day watching since December when we'd begun working on the space. my favorite customers of that day were miriam and her son, james, who would walk in the afternoons after she got done with work. james was still in his stroller and would dance and bob around as soon as he heard the music on in the store. he loved to dance.

their family would become extra special to us. matt and i had tried to decide between two houses when we moved to port norfolk, getting attached to each. matt wanted what we referred to as "the big house" and i wanted the little house. miriam and her husband james and her son james moved into the big house. her parents would come up from georgia and visit and bruiser, her dad, became one of the store's biggest fans. he would come in and visit, gave donations to organizations in our name, bought Louis L'Amour books, took amazing pictures of the store and framed them, and called often from georgia to order books for little james and even to be sent down to georgia. he was a retired doctor and i could easily say is one of the people that i value most in meeting in my entire life.

miriam and james and james moved away and we haven't heard from them in about a year and a half, but once bruiser sent me a family christmas card with all of their pictures on it, and i'll keep that forever.

now i'm totally off subject. our first day, five years ago yesterday. it was pretty, walking weather. our first customer was a friend of ours, Zeke, a sergeant that was on the ship with matt, otherwise known as gunny. he bought a book by Guy Friddell about Virginia, photography book with a little bit of text. a beautiful book. we sold around $280 in books that day, in about an hour and a half and we went to eat at Kotobuki afterwards to celebrate. we thought that if in just a few hours we could sell that much in books (rent was only $300 then...almost paid on the first day!) then we were so right for opening the store. we never had a zero dollar day, not in 5 years. when businesses around us didn't have visitors for days in a week, we were lucky and fortunate to have found a such a great place to grow wings.

after we had dinner, matt and i drove back past the store, all lit up with our cheap little lamp set that we'd bought at home depot or somewhere like that. once a reporter described our store as something out of a normal rockwell book, and i think she was right. we have had three different storefronts, and they fit. they fit the community and they were beautiful and for five years they were home.

my struggle yesterday with going by the store or thinking of the anniversary was simply that...where will home be now? who wants to go to work other than a place that they love more than anywhere else on earth? your spirit resides somewhere there, at home, and i feel restless now. unsure. empty and sad.

but so so so so lucky. how many people get to walk away with the knowledge that their work changed them. the bookstore changed how i look at things economically (did i admit that i bought things from home depot...we changed that after learning about how important small businesses were to communities and only bought wood and and as many supplies as we could for future stores from Robbie's Hardware and Portsmouth Lumber). it changed how i look at work, giving meaning to my career-life. it helped me meet hundreds of wonderful people from customers to authors to local media to publishers. it made me immensely stressed out, but so so happy. it made me feel important. not everyone is so lucky.

-susie