sally ann's

All the dead people stuff goes to the Salvation Army 'round here.

There are a huge proportion of polyester blouses and sprung suspenders, musty Christmas decorations and faded geegaws and doodads, all smelling old and tired and a little desperate.

Later in the summer the represented age group will shift - especially if there's a string of wet weekends, and then the thwarted garage sale things will flow thick and fast.

I was digging through the linens (I have a huge weakness for embroidered pillowcases) and spied something in the bin that made me stop and pick it up.

It was a book. And seeing it, suddenly I was thirteen and reading under the covers again, trying to get in a few more pages before my mother would demand I go to bed.

The Island Of The Blue Dolphins.

It even looked like my old copy - the same white cover with the Newberry Award leaping horse on it, same picture.


It could have fallen out of my thirteen-year-old self's nightstand. And now here it was, snuggled under three moth-ball smelling (horrible orange striped things) blankets, waiting for me.

So it came home with me, along with a copy of A Wrinkle In Time, because the two were jumbled in there together, and really, why break up such good friends?

Especially when suddenly I'm dying to re-read them both.

I may even break out a flashlight, just for old times sake.