There are those touchstones that it sometimes takes a lifetime to really appreciate.
One of mine has always been books.
They've been faithful companions from before I could do no more than stare at the pictures. I was blessed to be born into a family of readers. As an only child, they were often my only playmates.
(I was also blessed to be born into a family that took photographs regularly.)
My room, circa 1977: a globe, a Weebles treehouse, a DIY Barbie house made from cardboard boxes, and shelves of books, that, if you zoom in, you can see I've handwritten organizational markers and taped above each section
Among the countless books, there was one I'd searched across the years to reclaim.
In my hazy memory was this picture, specifically the notion I'd had when looking at the picture that I would have had to have been one of the treasures to see this angle. Maybe that's why it lodged itself in my memory for nearly the past half century.
and the vague recollection that the little boy hid his treasures behind a brick in a brownstone where he lived, which reminded me of Sesame Street. The treasures included a marble and a stick of gum.
That was all I had to go on.
From time to time, I'd google these things to see if I might come up with the book title.
Finally, this month, when I tried again, there it was.
Not the illustration above, but enough to track down the title of the book and discover there was a used copy on Amazon for a few dollars.
It arrived this evening.
Like all memories, I'd rearranged some of the key points.
There was more than one marble. I'd completely forgotten about the pen and the shiny rock.
And by the time we actually get to the recalled illustration above, the gum is long gone.
I'd forgotten entirely that this hiding spot was the second one in the book! Or that there was a second boy. It wasn't about moving to me, apparently. It was about treasures and secrets.
But here it is in its entirety (perhaps for someone else to find in the future as they too are googling odd phrases and snippets of memory)
And all those lovely watercolor illustrations of plants and birds and treasures and childhood:
The Hiding Place, 1971
Pauline Palmer Meek
Illustrated by Tom O'Sullivan
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