A customer brought in a family cookbook from 1952 for me to fix

It was falling apart, with pages loose and the cover hanging on by a thread. She said her grandma wrote all the recipes by hand, and she wanted to keep it for her own kids. I spent about 15 hours over a month carefully sewing the sections back together and making a new cloth cover. When I gave it back, she got a little teary and said, 'Now it feels like a real book again.' That moment made all the tricky work totally worth it. Has anyone else had a repair job that just felt really special?

3 comments

3 Comments

jana_henderson5224d ago

Blair_green86 you hit the nail right on the head with that drink therapist comment. It's SO true how fixing a thing means fixing a bit of that person's history too. I had a guy bring in an old photo album his mom had glued shut with rubber cement and it was a MESS. Spent weeks carefully prying each picture loose and putting them in new sleeves. When I handed it back, he just sat there flipping through it and said "I haven't seen these photos in 20 years." Honestly that made every second of peeling and scraping worth it.

harper_murphy2mo ago

That's the kind of job where you're basically a book therapist.

blair_green862mo ago

Yeah, and it feels like everything is getting framed that way now. Baristas are drink therapists, tech support are device therapists. We're all just out here listening to problems and trying to fix a mood, not just a thing.