A Consolation Prize

It was Rachel who said, “I love Emily Post.” She asked I tell her

when the big white book filled with intricate orders of service 

arrived at the bookshop. You read Emily Post? I asked her, waiting 

for some ironic response (for Rachel was the coolest of the cool 

in those days and I was a little in awe of her). Except she was serious. 

“I love the big white book,” she said, her dark eyes filled with wonder. 

“Where else can you go where it says it has all the answers?”

I soon lost Rachel in the flotsam of those years that were unkind 

to so many of us; later I was in a bookshop myself, my hand 

lingering on that thick white spine. It was heavy, weighty 

with wisdom that proclaimed it had a solution for everything;

I think I know now what Rachel was talking about: 

the reassurance of finding answers to questions you never 

even thought to ask. Only after her death did I understand 

that nobody has all the solutions, not little lost Rachel,

not even Emily Post, and what the book gives you at best 

is a consolation prize: 

something to cling to 

when you still believe that somewhere 

there might yet be answers.