I’m an unreliable narrator. A longtime daydreamer. What was happening in my mind was far more romantic than the reality of the moment.
Keep that in mind as I share this story about my love for libraries.
If you walked the broken sidewalk down three and a half blocks on the south side of the road, the trees kept you covered most of the way. This was important on the summer afternoons I couldn’t stand being alone in my grandma’s house anymore and took the walk to the library.
This was a small-town, two-room, Dewey-decimal library in a state of perpetual silence - not even the sound of rubber stamps smacking borrowing cards. Nobody was there borrowing books. I’m unsure if the librarian was sleeping or dead. She may have been a stack of phone books covered with a cardigan.
She didn’t acknowledge me as I walked through the children’s room to the second room with all the fiction, non-fiction and magazines. I was like Roald Dahl’s Matilda if Matilda was a husky 10-year-old boy incapable of magic and struggling with math.
I’d walk the stacks and pull random books from the shelves, read a few pages before setting the book back in its place. I never thought to take a book and sit down in a chair. I never took a book home as I didn’t have a library card and didn’t know how to get one. I perused the library like a museum - brief interactions with various pieces of art for about an hour or two.
Then I’d walk back to grandma’s house. If I had a few dollars, I could divert to the gas station for junk food.
I’d likely go back and do it again the next day.
The high school library was one room with a few books. I don’t remember ever checking out a book, but I did steal a book (a collection of Hemingway’s short stories) I have yet to return; played hooky from Spanish III (mi Español es pobre); and sat through the awkward sex education class that didn’t teach us anything about sex.
I was part junior high gifted class that met in the library. Another student in that class at the same time is now my wife. She is undoubtedly the best thing I’ve ever checked out.
The high school library felt different than any other room in the high school. More freedom, less judgement. Even if it was a slight feeling, any escape from feeling like a trapped, judged, insecure teenager was welcome.
Maybe that’s why I never returned that book.
My college experience was not unlike being that lonely 10-year-old again, except the library was three floors of prime space to wander aimlessly. It sat prominently in the middle of campus. I would pass it no matter where I was headed.
The bottom floor remained busy all hours of the day with study groups and frenzied procrastinators. The books lived upstairs in silence. I’d visit to have somewhere to go that wasn’t my dorm room and didn’t cost anything. I didn’t make friends in college, didn’t go to sporting events or even join a club. I went to the library.
I’d likely go back and do it again the next day.
I didn’t get my first library card until I was in my 20s, married and had kids.
The library changed for me then. Rather than a quiet place where I felt oddly less lonesome by myself in the quiet stacks of books, it became a place to share. A place to follow a six-year-old and gather their growing tower of books. We always check out more than we can possibly read in the time given. We linger to play with whatever toys are on the library rug or do whatever seasonal craft is atop the knee-high table.
Surrounded by a diverse and welcoming audience, my daughter shared a poem she wrote at a library “open mic” event, showing courage beyond her 14 years. Because libraries can do that too.
The kids request a trip to the library. Living in Raleigh, NC, there is an impressive library system, and we aim to visit each one.
We go home with our books and read them every night before bed.
We’ll likely go back and do it again next week, because the library is a magical place for daydreaming, aimless wandering and gathering the courage to be yourself.
Enjoying Title TBD? Please share, subscribe or drop a few dimes in the tip jar. Thanks!