Time Traveling Tuesday
Just came from the library, where I stopped to pick up something on hold. In the background I could hear Judith singing something over toward the children’s area. Whoosh! I went back 15 years. In an instant, I was holding my one-year-old, enjoying a precious moment to sit and rest while being so pleasantly entertained by one of Boone’s finest resources. A floodgate opened and I struggled to maintain my composure, staving off the menopausal gush of tears.
With Pandora’s lid ajar, the flashes of events past at the library continued. I was shelving books at the old library as a volunteer, selecting movies at the Western branch with my toddler, listening to the stories of 8-year-olds in a creative writing club, making a hundred different crafts, going on scavenger hunts, starting the Boone Boo, putting up bulletin boards, submitting my child’s work to ‘Thingummywhat’, feeling sticky ice cream dripping down my hand in the June heat while listening to some funky band, watching my daughter receive an award from Owen, joining the High Country Writers, and holding hands with Judith and Lisa (Children’s librarians) at Evelyn’s funeral, watching Ross tearfully carrying her coffin. Good thing I saw Loretta at this point. We always exchange sarcasm and it brought me back from the depths of my emotional time-traveling.
I could write paragraphs about all I have accomplished at this library in my adult life here in Boone since 1991, but I don’t want to bore you with another laundry list. There is one more memory I feel I should share though. It is a short spiel I gave at a town council meeting back during the tough times that followed the economic crash in 2008. The library was giving a case for funding and Randy asked me to say something. This was my appeal:
“There can be no keener way to evaluate a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children and elderly.
Nelson Mandela
The library is a center for both of these populations (young and old) so you can judge this society (Boone) by it’s library.”
Not sure if it helped, but that’s what I said. My parents raised me through childhood, but the library raised me through my adulthood. Apologies library, it’s not all your fault how I turned out, but you did a lot for me and I am eternally grateful. See y’all later I’m going to get a tissue.