The other day, while driving, we passed a kid walking down the street with headphones on. My son, Cash, declared, “I want a Walkman.”

“To play discs or cassettes?” I asked.

“Cassettes,” he replied
(To get an idea of my 8-year-old son’s precocious interest in music, please see: The Bee Hive Chronicles #6 – The Rock History Schooling of a 7-year-old – http://www.thebeehivechronicles.com/6-the-rock-history-schooling-of-a-7-year-old/ )

“What are cassettes?” Olive asked

I then went on to explain what cassettes were. And how you buy them in record stores. Same as records or cds.

The next question just about left me speechless…

“What is a record store?”

My younger self – the one that spent many, many, many hours of her adolescent and young adult life flipping through bins and bins of records, cassettes, and cds in record stores in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Portland and any town or city I happened to be in between – would have thought you were joking if you would have told her that some day her daughter would ask the question – “What is a record store?”

And so, I have given this a lot of thought.

Of course, I am partially to blame for my daughter’s lack of knowledge (Cash was up on record stores) of what a record store is. Both my kids’ deep interest in music has so effortlessly been accommodated by the ease of Apple Music and Spotify. Whatever they are curious about or whatever I want to play for them, so simple to access. Playlists created with a simple tap (Oh – the sweet toil of making a mixed tape! Such a labor of love….). That I have failed to educate them on what my own music hunting experience was up until not that, relatively, long ago.

“My younger self….would have thought you were joking if you would have told her that some day her daughter would ask the question – “What is a record store?”

As I fight to sustain my business, an independent book store, it is a bitter pill to swallow – one that feels a bit like foreshadowing – to realize that record stores are not as common as they once were. That the experience of your heart stopping from excitement when you discover, as you thumb through records or flip through plastic-encased cassettes or cds, an obscure album  by your favorite band or a single you didn’t know existed by a musician you love – that that experience is something totally different now. That experience now – is a little less dimensional. And without that connection to discovery. Connection to the music-lovers flipping next to you. Connection to the committed diehards who run and work in record stores. And, and this is a big one,  without the delicious anticipation. The anticipation of getting to where ever it is that you will play that precious record or cassette or cd – for the first time.

I feel that Olive has the same awe and obsession and attachment to book stores as, perhaps, I did for record stores. She literally goes into the Bee Hive and just smells the books. Opens them up and breathes in. Though she is eleven, she studies the illustrations of each picture book she hasn’t seen before. She will sit in a corner and get completely lost in the magic of chapter books for hours. And then – she goes home and compiles the list of which books she is going to read when and where, and in what order.

What I would love, is for her to not have to  experience her kids asking her one day – “What is a book store?”

But is it inevitable?

I don’t believe so.

I truly don’t.

I have faith.

Faith that we are aware enough as a species to not allow books to become charming relics that hipsters use to decorate their houses with. But, rather, we will hold on tight and they will continue to delight us. Teach us. Nurture us. Connect us….

And book stores will remain the places we go to in order to be around the people. Our people. The ones that open books and breath deeply. The ones that go away with that sweet anticipation of the moment they will get to start reading. The ones who may not have been delighted by a story the same way you were, but respect your perspective nonetheless. The ones that just – get it.

A quote – by a poet that I love so much – has been lately playing over and over in my head a lot. And so, I have claimed it as my mantra…

“Do not go gentle into that good night
Rage, rage against the dying of the light”
— Dylan Thomas

For the sake of my future grandchildren and all the beautiful moments, life-changing connections, and profound experiences that I want for them –

I will never stop raging.