Milestones
Well now, everything dies, baby, that’s a fact
But maybe everything that dies someday comes back
Put your makeup on, fix your hair up pretty
And meet me tonight in Atlantic City
-Bruce Springsteen “Atlantic City”
They stood for a third ovation as my mother rose from her table to leave her banquet. It was a long minute to walk the 50 feet to exit the ballroom. The applause remained constant. She was embarrassed, but they continued. Finally, she whispered to our host who promptly boomed out, “Carla wants you to sit down.” So they did.
The modern Las Vegas casino technology that masks the tobacco smell has not made its way to the Trump Marina in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The 70’s cigarette scent permeates the carpets and drapes near the rows of slot machines that are 98% empty. In the ballroom across the hallway, 150 booksellers and publishers gathered to honor my mother and her co-founder Barbara Meade with the Mid-Atlantic Booksellers’ version of the Irving Thalberg award. Publisher’s Weekly covered it this week.
Using her walker, my mother methodically made her way to a cocktail table where people arrived to congratulate and wish her well. Walking the long hallways in the hotel required immense energy. At 74 and owners of the most famous bookstore in the region, the P&P partners were treated like the grand dames of the ball. Nobody mentioned Mom’s illness, but their smiles and body language conveyed what we all thought: “We made it. She’s still with us.” She soldiered to get to this event.
Cancer patients need milestones and our family pointed to Thalberg all summer. After my grandmother’s 100th birthday in May, the next milestone became my son’s 10th birthday. She might have visited New York, but she was hospitalized that week with an infection. In August, Atlantic City felt years away. Now, we quieted before she spoke.
Mom alternates between moments of cogent eloquence and stream of consciousness prose that would not make for a good acceptance speech. Mom was necessarily brief. She spoke for maybe a minute focusing on a single motif:
It’s fun to be here. I’ve always had fun. It’s fun for me to see you and I hope you have fun selling books.
Barbara spoke movingly about her 26 year journey with Mom and how well things had turned out. She urged the young booksellers in the room to consider partnership and find ways to work together. 3 minutes and two themes: Fun and Partnership
As we started eating our salads, one of the store’s most senior managers, Mark LaFramboise introduced a new award that would be named in honor of my mother. The Carla Cohen award will be given to the book that most reinforces the right to free speech in society. Pretty heady stuff. Another standing ovation.
People stopped by the table to offer us help with the search for new ownership of the store. Friends bent down to give her kisses. She remembered all the faces and many of the names. People love her and many of them (especially the women) expressed it.
I scouted high and low for comedic material about the evening, but the search turned up nothing. The story feels increasingly cinematic — a real-life tearjerker, a celebration of institutional endurance, and personal resilience.
Independent bookstores are an endangered species, but, so too, are Borders and Barnes and Noble. Politics and Prose has a soul. To think it will die because of the kindle/Ipad revolution is to view the world through the prism of a spreadsheet or an Ipad App. Independents are threatened, but they don’t have cancer.
During the dinner, Mom told us that she wanted to keynote the booksellers Winter Institute — an Academy to study their craft. We have our next milestone. It’s 4 months away.
Special thanks to Ben Hunter who reminded me of the Springsteen ballad in the epigraph
Notes
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