what's in a white shelf?

{book case + baby gym}

This is my favorite part of our house. And I love the fact that these bookshelves are white. I grew up around solid oak book cases, and I've always had some faux wood shelves in my own places. But why be tied to wood coloring when it's not even real wood? Sure, IKEA's stuff is wooden, but I wouldn't really call it wood; it's more like molten woodstuffs. 

Maybe I wanted the bookshelves to match the two pieces of furniture I've never gotten rid of. First, my mother's hope chest, which has been moving with me since I was 17. I must have transported that thing at least a full handful of times with what few other belongings in the back seat of my sedan. (You're talkin' to a girl who has moved more than 20 times in as many years and who has lightened her load [read: gifted and goodwilled maniacally] more times than she cares to remember.) Second, my grandpa's solid heavy desk. But you know what? Fake wood will never match real wood, and one wood usually doesn't match another wood either. 

After living through a long Patagonian winter--half of it spent in a low-ceilinged, dark icebox--I dreamed of living in white place with white, clean lines. Everything around me would be some shade of white. However when we arrived to the States and finally moved into our apartment taking stock of the things I did still own, white just didn't seem in my future. So when we went to IKEA, I imagined purchasing something black. Or maybe even red. But white matches everything; or it doesn't beg to match anything. Happily (after hours walking through a weekday IKEA with little R in the carrier) we banked on white.

As I unpacked the boxes of books and haphazardly organized them a la heather, I saw how they tell a loose history of me. Aside from family furniture, books are the one thing I never let go. That is, until I left for South America. I sold about three boxes of me to a used bookshop right before I skedaddled. But the remainder still creates a complete-enough history. Even if I'm the only one who knows the story. The classes I've taken, papers I've written, where certain books were acquired or read, how used Elizabeth Bishop's Letters reeked of stale cigarette smoke when I sliced open the box in my cubicle at work. 

{go toward the white}

What I love most about the whiteness of our shelves is the context they offer. Stuff pops off each shelf in splishes of color. They signal a beginning. Baby books and family magazines. Arrows to our ourness.