Hello ink splAters.

Here’s the news:

My store is shutting down on Sunday. Morley Walker wrote a very good article in the Winnipeg Free Press about it if you’d like the details. 

But let’s talk memories (be warned: now that I am, effectively, laid-off from the store that I helped build, I’m developing a syndrome that allows me to only remember what was great about it and my job).

When former-boss Kris interviewed me in February 2008, one thing always stuck with me (though I admit I may be paraphrasing; time and nerves alter memories of course). “Let’s be honest,” he said. “Working at a book store is the best retail job you can get.”

And he wasn’t kidding.

I’ve probably mentioned it before - mentioned the loveliness that is book store retail - but I will wax poetic on the subject once more for your reading pleasure. 

There’s something about a book store, or maybe just McNally Robinson, that has a calming influence on people. The word haven comes to mind. There’s a quality in a giant room of books. It demands a measure of peacefulness, a moment of reflection, a slight unclenching of the over-stressed muscles of holiday shoppers. For readers, walking into a book store, library, room of a fellow bookworm, is an invitation to breathe, browse, and gain a brief respite from realities beyond the smell of new paper, the sight of fresh black type against crisp white  sheets, and the gleeful discovery of an author’s signature on the inside cover.

It’s the same quality that encourages customers to speak to booksellers like people instead of servants (which does result, occasionally, in them sharing too much). It’s the same quality, too, which encouraged customers to pay all in dimes, nickles, and pennies because there was no rush.

The customers were great overall (and occasionally completely horrible) and I’ll miss the special mix of people that I had the chance to meet, help, and from whom I’ve gained innumerable stories - bad, good, and bizarre.

But I’m truly torn-up inside about having only five more days (and for me, three more shifts) with the brilliant, crazy, wonderful, weird, gorgeous, awe-inspiring booksellers with whom I’ve fell in love over the last two years.  Never have you seen a stranger, more dsyfunctional, or more fantastic work family than the one to which I belong at McNally. A deep, aching hole inside me widens every time I think that a week from now I will be poorer not monetarily (well, that too) but in friendships. It’s not to say that I will lose all of these phenomenal people as my friends, but rather that we will no longer have a unifying purpose, an opportunity to create stories and jokes, a chance to be a family, as readily as before.

I have one last Saturday evening at the book store - an idea that is…surreal, at the least - and I’m struggling to imagine what I could possibly do to make it the best…

There is much more I wanted to say. About how I can no longer meet with Pav and Thom in Prairie Ink to discuss our writing. About my favorite customers. About McNally Robinson trading cards, and the first time Jen picked me to do the bestseller table, and the disaster of a gardening offsite that “Cisely” and I did together, and the day I determined that “Bruce” didn’t hate me, and the time Kate and Taryn flirted me into the bar for a work party when I had forgotten my ID, and the first ever Saturday night drinks, and the first shift I ever got through without having to ask how to do something and… so so so much more.

But instead, ink splAters, why don’t you share your stories? Comment, or if you’d like a bit more space let me know and I’ll add you as a writer so you can do a real post.

Love you all.

inksplAt bookworm

Sarah E. Lund