What a difference a year makes.

Last year on July 4th, I was supposed to sleep in.  I didn’t have to work until 1:30 and had a lazy day planned.  I was shot straight from sleep to sitting bolt upright when I heard the upstairs neighbor to my basement apartment say, “Cafe Moxie’s on fire!”

I probably scared the heck out of them as I charged upstairs with a “What!?!”  They looked at me like I was crazy until I reminded them that the bookstore shared a wall with Moxie.  Within 3 minutes, I was in a car.

The 5 minute drive to town lasted about an hour.  I heard on the police scanner someone asking for another ambulance to be sent to Main St.  All I knew was it was after 9.  The bookstore was open, full of people I had scheduled to be there, and they were calling for an ambulance.

When we saw that traffic would block the typical route to Main St, I got out of the car and ran down a side street.  Some grace led me to choose the one where my staff just happened to be standing.  I don’t remember ever being so happy to see them all.  Everyone was safe.  And I learned that they had been evacuated, but so far, the bookstore was fine.  Turns out, I got there about 10 minutes after 911 was called.

Then began the slow process of realization.  At first, it was just Moxie, then the perimeter kept moving back.  We were asked to stand further and further away from the store.  More trucks came.  More firemen came.  It probably started to really sink in that the bookstore would be lost when we saw the firemen breaking the second story window and black smoke billowed out.  Then watching them spray hoses directly into our doorway, a stream of water pouring over our awning.

I held it together pretty well until I decided I had to call my mom (a born worrier) in case she heard something on the news, just to let her know everyone was safe.  The second I heard her voice on the phone, I sobbed.

We ended up holding our first vigil at the outside seating of Mocha Mott’s.  We sat at the table and just watched as one sign after another confirmed our worst fears.  Everyone had left the bookstore with nothing, but I had a copy of The Giver in my bag, so we set it on the table while the wonderful staff at Mott’s gave us bagels, and people periodically broke off to play a game of pool in the back room of The Devil’s Dictionary.

Ocassionally, someone would get up, too restless to keep waiting, and try to get more news, locate more co-workers, look at it from a different angle.  The most frightening for me was looking at it from the Moxie side and seeing what looked like a gaping hole in the side of the building. (It turned out later it did not actually go entirely through into the inside.)  Seeing that, knowing exactly what books had been located there added one more layer: guilt.  All those books that were burning that were in the store because I had brought them there.  Which is ridiculous.  But there it was.

Eventually, we all went up the street to Dawn’s house.  We gathered, chatted, probably drank a little too much (absolutely drank a little too much).  And, as always happens, we couldn’t keep up a state of constant grieving.  We went back to sharing old favorite bookstore war stories. The ones that will never stop making us laugh.  This time we had a new one to add to the bunch: the last customer of the day had bought a copy of Edgar Sawtelle as a gift for a friend.  When Karen told everyone the building was being evacuated, she wouldn’t leave until she had purchased it.  When Karen said that everyone needed to be out immediately, her response was, “Don’t worry… I won’t make you wrap it.”  And there were also way to many bad attempts at humor over the 4th of July “fire”works at the the BoG.  And the incredible fact that one of the books sitting in our window display… When You Are Engulfed in Flames.

Eventually we went home, feeling like we had a lost a dear friend that day, exhausted from what felt like the longest day of my life.

Fast forward one year.  Skip past the boredom and terror of filling time, not knowing when or whether there would be a bookstore again; skip past the excitement of a new owner, the godsend of the temporary store, the frustration of delay, the joy and stress of restocking and reopening.

This year on July 4th, I woke at 6, mind already buzzing with the hundred details still to be attended to before the grand opening celebration, starting at 10.

Supposed to be starting at 10, anyway.  See– we normally open at 9 and while we thought it had been clear that the celebration started at 10, people had begun lining up at 8 on the promise that the early birds get free t-shirts.  Well… how to put this… you know how all those fangirls keep trampling each other when Robert Pattinson shows up at the mall?  Just call us Hot Topic.

We opened at 9.

We had a few wonderful surprises… Rose Styron, here to sign her poetry, brought some signed William Styron books, as well as houseguest Carlos Fuentes, also willing to sign.

One of our volunteers, Van, with David McCullough

We had a great time with a slew of Island authors (is there a collective noun for local authors?  A ream? A quill? A joy?)  We had 24 authors over 4 hours, balloons, face painting, story hour, lemonade that was always too strong, 800 cupcakes, a raffle.

We had chaos.  Complete.  Utter.  Exhausting.  Chaos.  And the 16 hour work day passed in the blink of an eye.

The last 3 weeks, we’ve had so much to do, so many lists, sometimes it feels like you’re trying so hard to do what you can for everyone, that you can’t

Ward Just

manage to satisfy anyone (BTW if I haven’t responded to your email, forgive me.)  You find yourself wishing, every day, for just 5 hours extra… then maybe, you could manage it all.

We kept saying let’s just get through Grand Opening.  If we can just get past the 4th, we’ll be OK.

So, what difference does a year make?

Jules & Kate Feiffer

I look at last year… every desperate hour stretching, waiting, stretching… vs. the eye-blink of this year.

And….  I can only hope for continued chaos, shorted sleep, upset correspondents, angry t-shirt mobs and bitter lemonade.

I wouldn’t have it any other way.