Bound by Books

by

Anne Michael

My friend, Terry, with whom I’ve been friends for 40 years, celebrated her birthday a couple of weeks ago. As is our custom, we telephoned each other on our birthdays. Because of our 2 1/2 month age difference, she teases me on my birthday about the fact she is younger than me. I return the favor on her birthday and remind her she is no longer younger. It’s a silly game started many years ago, but these phone calls have become a tradition. We have a lot of traditions between us.

During these calls, we generally end up being astonished at how the years have flown and re-live some of our history together. One of our favorite memories is from the early days of our friendship when we taught ourselves how to speak sign language on a rudimentary level so that we could converse without getting in trouble for “talking” in class. We helped each other grow up and still continue to help each other grow. We have far more memories, however, of the times when we had nothing except a few late basement/early attic treasures with which to furnish our new apartments as young married women. We laid the tea tray out with our tea pots and mugs on cardboard boxes covered with dime-store dish towels  and sat on the floor in what were empty dining rooms for hours imagining what our homes would look like and what our lives would be like. While reality was nothing at all what we imagined, we persevered! We found joy where we could. We shared with each other the books we read, we traded cuttings rooted in old coffee mugs or soup cans from our best plants so our windowsills were always covered with something green and growing. and sometimes we shared fabric for sewing or the new stitches we learned as we embroidered. As time passed furniture filled our homes and our children played around us. There were conversations over hot pots of tea as we shared who we were, who we became and who we are. 

When I called with birthday wishes this year that day was no exception. There was the delighted recognition of the much-beloved voice on the phone, the smiles in our voices and the things we wished to share jumping to our lips, and ears eager to listen as we started a conversation that was special and memorable for both of us. It was with great excitement that Terry told me she had been reading Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See. She told me how much she had enjoyed it and said, “Lily and Snow Flower are like us—old sames; I’ve always known that our friendship was special, but for it to have a name is wonderful.” 

I had the same thoughts when I read that book. I, too, recognized the kind of relationship the two women had as being akin to the friendship Terry and I have always shared. I did not feel as though I could describe it in a way that would make sense to Terry, so I never mentioned it in previous conversations. Instead I determined that when I had the extra money, I would send her the book. It wasn’t necessary; she came to the book on her own.

I forgot to ask how her how she discovered it. Perhaps it was recommended to her by another friend. Maybe it was the reviews that Nicki Leone and I wrote for Bibliobuffet that did it. It could be she chanced upon it when she last visited a library or bookstore. It matters not. What is relevant to me is that my good and dear friend saw the same things that I saw and instantly related it to our longstanding friendship, born in childhood freedom, sustained through our lifetimes of living and that still remains steadfast as we journey toward the end of our days many years hence. I am thrilled that she cared to share with me her thoughts and emotions. We don’t always get to do this with our busy days at work and fatigue at day’s end and our families. I am gratified that my treasured friend felt as I did and was as happy with the comparison as I was.

When Terry and I were very young women we’d often talk about books. We read every chance we could grab and would often swap them. They took us out of our daily worlds of dirty diapers, dusty corners and cobwebs, incessant preparation of meals and endless sinks of dirty dishes. The books gave us things to talk about besides recipes and mundane local gossip. We did this over pots of tea as we held sleeping babies in our laps or soothed toddlers that had bumped their heads.

Forty wonderful years and 1,500 miles distant, we are still drawn together by a book and its characters. Despite the vagaries and aches of older bodies and the occasionally pedestrian requirements of our careers, dirty dishes, dusty floors that always seem to be there we remain connected by the books we read and talk about with the same kind of excited laughter and amazement and pleasure with which we discussed Poe, Shakespeare, Catcher in the Rye and the poetry of Shel Silverstein in high school. Life’s journey is somehow easier with a good book and a great friend.


At age 10, Anne realized she was never going to get to be Miss America since reading a book was not an acceptable talent. So she went on to get a job and raise a family. Along the way, she fixed meals, picked up toys, helped with homework, and collected a drawer full of rejection slips for her “great American novel.” It was not all bad, however, since she ended up wallpapering a closet with them. She currently designs and creates greeting cards for her tiny company, The Frog Prints, LLC, and also works full-time as a Training Specialist. Anne is currently tethered to reality by a loving spouse, two dogs and the occasional hurricane that blows through Florida, although falling headlong and happily into a book is still her favorite “talent.” She can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it