Editor’s Note:  Sometimes fate seems against us, but other times an unexpected lovely gift just drops in our lap. I first met Sara Wrye at one of the writing critique groups I attend. Her poetry is well received by the group and is notable for its sincere tone and open-hearted themes. As Christmas approached, I didn’t have anything special or Christmasy planned for the website. And then, out of the blue, Sara sent me an email asking if I would be interested in publishing a piece she had written. Was I ever interested! This is Sara’s first appearance on the Bayou City Press website. I hope you will enjoy her story of her family’s Houston Christmas Eve tradition as much as I did.

“Did y’all see this?” The group text to my family from my little sister arrived one evening in early November, followed by an emoji with streaming tears. The photo attached to the text was from the Houston Chronicle and showed a picture of the Rice Village Half Price Books store beneath the headline “Half Price Books in Rice Village set to close its doors.” You’re probably thinking, “It’s just a bookstore, and a big chain these days. Why the streaming tears?”

As the holidays approach this year, I’ve been thinking a lot about history and tradition, with the typical holiday tinge of nostalgia. In a town like Houston, history doesn’t seem to mean much. Old churches get torn down, while long-standing pawn shops get gutted and repurposed.

Obviously, much history is attached to a bookstore that’s been around my whole life, but the part that makes me tear up as I head out for my morning run in the dark, balmy Houston humidity of a December morning is the tradition my family has with that particular bookstore. Every Christmas Eve for the past twenty years, we have met up and headed over to Rice Village for cheap, last minute Christmas shopping at Half Price Books.

So, as I sit on the floor at Half Price reading the first chapter of Larry McMurtry’s The Late Child a few weeks after getting the news, I get caught up in the sadness again as I overhear another customer ask, “Is it true? Are y’all closing?”

The salesperson responds, “Yes, in March. The rent went up 40%, and….”

The store has lost some of its ambience over the years. It has a bit of a funky smell these days, and the second floor wobbles depending on how many people are darting across it at any given time—but it has been our store and our tradition for so long now.

We didn’t always go to this location. My memories are fuzzy, but I recall an old house somewhere in Houston in the early to mid 1990s that used to be a Half Price location before the bookstore chain became a more corporate establishment. More often than not, though, the Rice Village location has been the one for us.

Once there with the family, I’d search and search the music section for a book my dad hadn’t read about Bob Dylan, or check out the history section for a book on Texas history. I’d peruse dollar paperbacks or the fiction upstairs for books to give my siblings so they could buy them for me. I’d cleverly hide a cookbook behind another book and carry it around the store in case I ran into my sister, the intended recipient, in the aisles.

In the good old days, the store was open until midnight, and we’d spend a couple of hours combing the shelves. As businesses became more employee-conscious, Half Price started closing at 6 PM, and so our tradition evolved into an afternoon at the bookstore followed by dinner.

Not every title purchased for me by a family member on Christmas Eve at Half Price Books has meant much to me, and I can’t even say I’ve read them all. There’s at least one Faulkner novel I chose for someone to buy me that I have yet to read—but several of the books have had a real impact on my life over the years.

My first year out of college, my mother picked out and gifted to me a copy of Nikki Giovanni’s My House, whose first poem happens to be titled “Legacies.” At the time, the book went in a “books to be read” pile. I somewhat forgot about it until I found myself going through a hard time and looking for something in poetry, something which I discovered in this book. Certain answers I was searching for became clear in the ideas about history, tradition, and relationships that Giovanni eloquently outlines. I’ve gone back to this book frequently in recent years and find new answers with each re-reading.

One year my dad bought me a copy of Woman in the Mists by Farley Mowat, which tells the story of Dian Fossey and her studies with gorillas in Africa. Dad was very much into nonfiction, but I’ve always been a fiction reader for the most part. I spent a good deal of winter break that year bundled up in our chilly house reading this book, learning all about what it was like to travel in another country and study animals firsthand. There was always something to learn in a book from dad.

Four years ago, I was finishing my first semester as a teacher’s assistant at a small school. We teachers were tasked with thinking over the winter break about a skill or interest we could bring to the classroom to teach students about in the spring semester. I sat upstairs on the worn-out carpet at Half Price on Christmas Eve and found myself in what passes for the education section. There I happened on a book, Drawing with Children by Mona Brookes. I passed it off to my brother to spend the $3.99 on it as a Christmas gift for me.

I got it handed back to me, unwrapped as usual, the next day. I spent the next week reading and studying the book and its instructions about teaching art to children. From there, the idea blossomed into an art class I led that spring with sketchbooks and creative lesson ideas. Eventually, the class went far beyond drawing, but had it not been for that book I would not have been guided step-by-step through the process of teaching art.

As a good friend and I used to joke, ICML (It Changed My Life). Most of the years and books have blurred together, but these three books stand out for me as exemplars of what has become a well-loved tradition over the years.

So, in a little more than a day, my family will bustle into Half Price Books in Rice Village for what is likely to be our last Christmas Eve there. We’ll spend hours perusing the shelves. I’ll pass my brother a book, and he may pass one my way. I will walk up the spiral staircase to the fiction section and browse novels until I find one I can’t put down. I’ll look at the picture books this year, hoping to find a souvenir for my one-year-old niece. Mom will conceal some books under her arm, and we’ll all check out separately to avoid spoiling the surprise about the fruits of our labor. Then we will head off to eat sushi.

On Christmas, when the gifts are passed out, one of us just may unwrap a life-altering treasure. Another, different bookstore is most likely in our future, but I’ll always cherish my memories of this particular one.

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