Last night I reorganized my bookshelves. By reorganize, I mean disassembling stacked crates and reassembling them in a different way to maximize storage, while incorporating a new crate from the second-hand store. It was like working with building blocks. The crates were mostly my father’s, his initials ‘AF’ (Art Frizzell) stamped onto the end of a few. Their original purpose was getting tomatoes from fields in Cressy, Prince Edward County, up the road to Waupoos Canary—before it closed in the 70s, and Dad changed crops. A couple are wooden boxes that butter (Canadian Butter Saskatchewan is stamped on them, Co-op in the centre) came in for Frizzell Grocery—the store was gone before I was born, but had operated out of the farmhouse kitchen. As I lugged and lifted, I thought of how my father lugged and lifted the same crates. I wondered who in the family had unpacked the butter. I felt a sense of connection. Dad would be pleased to know that the crates are being put to good use, I thought. Part of me felt he does know and is happy about it. When you’re standing the midst of things that bring the past into the present, surrounded by talismans and books that transport character, knowledge and stories through time, it’s easy to slip into the mystery and accept that anything is possible; more things in heaven and earth than can be dreamt of in our philosophies, and all that. I was filled with gratitude for those old crates, and all they went through to be there with me holding my books, products of thought and imagination rather than the field—man does not live on tomatoes and butter, alone. And time is a stubborn illusion.