6/29/2023 0 Comments Mere christianity barnes and nobleI watched the book’s spine crack, the pages bend, and felt the lightheadedness I now associate with infatuation. That night, my mom started The Magician’s Nephew at the foot of my bunk bed. I couldn’t read the words or make sense of the otherworldly animals in the tiny paintings, but the strangeness startled my young mind. I was careful to open the books from the edges to create no evidence of my visitation. In the afternoon sun, buzzing from sheet cake, my blue paper cap still on my head, I wasted no time. I carried my unwrapped, sharp cornered mass of stories upstairs to my bedroom and shook the box until they spilled out. Maybe it was the way my mom’s eyes lifted in recognition, the utterly grown-up mossy green set behind a gold script? The glossy collectors’ box held seven books tight in a row, impossible to fit back in once they were out. It’s hard to know what drew me to it, resting atop a tall shelf. I’d asked for it after spotting it at Barnes and Noble months earlier. His full color illustrated box set of the Chronicles of Narnia was a gift from my parents. Lewis on the afternoon of my Kindergarten graduation. Do you think it all meant nothing, all the longing? The longing for home? For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back.” “The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing-to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from-my country, the place where I ought to have been born. Not Like Going, but Like Going Back Erika Veurink
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