I’d like to share a little story that, I think, illustrates the connections we can have through the books that come into our lives.

Some years back I had a part time business buying and selling used books.  My father and I were talking  one day and I was telling him  how I was able to find salable books by frequenting yard sales and thrift shops.

“You know,” he said, after listening to some of my exploits, “I had a book years ago that I haven’t been able to locate.  It was called ‘forty power tools you can make’  It was such a great book.  I lent it to a guy I knew and he moved away and the book went with him.  I haven’t heard from him since, and I have no idea where he is now.”

Dad talked more about the book and told me how he had often used it to help him in his woodworking hobby.  It gave detailed instructions for assembling power tools using old automobile parts and pieces of scrap metal.

But there was more to the book than just its practical value.  The copy he had loaned had in fact been given to him by a good friend.  Dad expected that one day his friend would ask about the book  and he would have to tell him it was gone.  He felt responsible for the loss of this great gift from a friend.  He said he had looked for it in second hand bookstores over the years but nobody had even heard of it.  It was obviously something he not only missed but  had almost given up hope of ever finding again.

“If you ever run across that book, pick it up for me,” he said.

I told him I would keep my eyes open for it but that the chances of finding that particular title among the books I found at garage and church sales were pretty slim.  I filed the title away in my head but felt I would probably never come across such an obscure book.

The years slipped by and I stayed with my book business, stopping for every yard and garage sale sign I saw and searching the want ads for rummage sales and church bazzars, looking for interesting and saleable books; my dad’s request neatly tucked way back in my mind’s filing cabinet in a folder labelled ‘lotsa luck on this one’.

Then, one fall evening as I scanned the shelves of books for sale in a church basement, a slim brown book caught my eye.  There it was:  ‘forty power tools you can make’.  I could barely believe my luck.  I found myself, as I picked it up, smiling broadly with the realization that something both unexpected and portentous had just happened.  A sticker on the front cover of the book informed me that I would have to pay twenty-five cents for this little piece of my father’s past.

The next day I drove to my parents’ house in Surrey with the book.  Dad was out in his workshop in the back yard when I arrived so I got the latest health update in the kitchen with mom.  Dad’s health had been failing the past year.  He had emphysema which was progressively worsening and at sixty he looked and felt much older.

“He’s not very good this past few days”, mom said with a worried look.  “His breathing is not good.  He gets out of breath so easily lately and he’s quite depressed.”  The depression was unusual for dad.  Even though his health had been iffy for years, he rarely let it get him down.  Mom’s anxious expression said it all.  Dad wasn’t doing well.

The awareness of my father’s situation sank in as I headed out the back door toward the workshop with the book in my hand.  I felt the same helplessness I knew mom felt watching dad wearing away slowly with this disease.  Maybe the book would lift his spirits a bit.

Dad was just starting back to the house after firing up the old pot-bellied stove he used to heat the shop and I watched him coming down the path toward me.  He looked so much older and his gait was slowed.  It seemed to be such an effort for him to take each step.  And when he saw me he didn’t flash that quick smile of recognition I always got.  He looked weary and defeated.

I walked up to him and without saying a word, handed him the book.  He took it in his hands.  It was a moment before he realized what it was.  Then,  as we stood there on the path and dad recognized the book, I watched a marvelous smile, like a sunrise, light up his tired face.  And then something else happened.  He looked slowly from the book to me.  The smile was still there but there was something else in his eyes, a combination of joy and gratitude and, I think, the kind of thanks he found it difficult to find words to express.  We stood there, dad and I, that fall afternoon in his back yard, connected as perhaps never before by a priceless twenty-five cent book.