When I was a young girl, I believed that a library was a place to check out books, period. That was what I gleaned when I went there with my mother, who always had a perilously high stack of library books on her nightstand. We were a military family, and we moved about every 10 minutes. The first thing my mom always did when we arrived at a new place was to get her library card. She read every night before bed, and she had a certain way of doing it. First, she pulled out a Heath bar that she had stashed in her nightstand, and then she ate it slowly while she read in bed. She had spent all day giving to her family. This time of evening reading, that was all for her: the candy bar, the yellow lamplight, the going away without going away.
Growing up, I spent many hours in various libraries, waiting for my mom to check out books for her and for me. I whiled away the time playing with the card catalog and pretending I was a librarian wearing red lipstick and high heels and angrily shushing noisy patrons. Which sort of begs the question of whether I wanted to be a librarian or a dominatrix.
I also used to love to watch the librarians use the combo pencil/rubber date stamper to remind patrons when the books were due. I lusted after that tool. I still do.
What a change we have seen in our libraries! You can now check out not only books, but movies, power tools, passes for museums, even sewing machines.
But I went to my library the other day not to check out anything, but for relief.
I used to wish that I could live in interesting times. I suppose it will come as no surprise that I no longer wish that. Now I wish most fervently to live in the most banal of times. But these times are not that. These times require a certain spine straightening every now and then, and more than that, these times require that you seek out some comfort every now and then. So I went to the library because I knew it would make me feel better, more hopeful, less scared, even a little optimistic. Here’s what I found.
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