The bookshelf

If you enter my grandparents’ house and you take a left on the first door, you will come across a long hall. The wooden floor will crack beneath your feet no matter how light you step on them, if you look to your right you will see and hear my grandmothers birds, always chiming as loud as they can, the smell of her never-ending food will get to you before you can reach the kitchen on the left, and at the very end of the hall you will meet with two of the most cozy and cushy green sofas. Green as in the most horrible green you can imagine, designed, as my grandfather will tell you a thousand times, to brighten the room. But never mind that, when you settle into these green sofas that’s when it all starts, there you can fully appreciate it. The bookshelf. So big it makes the room look small, covered in books and books of all colors and designs, waiting to be read. The only way you could reach the dusty old books on the top is if you used the fragile ladder on the side. But we were never allowed to touch it. I think my grandparents were afraid that we were going to mess up their carefully and perfectly categorized and alphabetized collection. You might live as twice as age as my grandfather did but it wouldn’t have enough time to finish all those stories. My greatest memories come from that place; it was in those green sofas that we, my two brothers and me, spent our nights at our grandparents. There she grab a book from the “kids section” and began unraveling its mysteries to us. My brothers and I always listen to her words, paying close attention to the prince that was going to save his kindred or the ugly and fat witch that got misunderstood by her friends, always a new story, always a new adventure. It was thanks to my grandmother and her many hours spent on those green couches that led me to appreciate reading. She took it upon herself to show us that magic can come from a book. Now, no matter where I am, when I open a book I can see myself on those couches staring at the big bookshelf, another day, another story.     

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