Checked Out

Clear as a winter night sky starred with twinkling lights surrounding Orion’s Belt and Jupiter, I remember when my mother took me sometimes in the car, other times on foot, up our slanted driveway, down the street and across the railroad tracks, then five blocks further to visit the local branch of the South Bend Public Library on Mishawaka Avenue. It was important to my mother that I always have a book in my hands.

At age four or five, I remember looking into the two leaded glass bay windows, one filled with books beyond my comprehension and the other displaying picture books and Little Golden Books, Hardy Boys books and Nancy Drew books, books by Agatha Christie and titles of books I don’t remember.

As comforting as the shiny scent of a new box of 48-count Crayola crayons or of a freshly sharpened pencil, the metal sharpener screwed to the wall warmed with lead shavings, I remember the stilled air inside the modest library. I remember the sturdy age of the wood floor. I remember the excitement of the children sitting criss-cross applesauce for story time. I remember the friendly librarian before us sitting on a red plastic child-sized chair, its metal legs so shiny I could see my reflection in them, her legs glued together at the ankles and angled to the side while she held the book with her fingertips and read a sentence at a time from upside down while we studied the pictures.

I remember the coolness of the metal handles of the card catalog cabinets I’d pull with my index finger, sometimes my pinkie finger. I remember the neatly filed index cards inked with black typing and yellowing with time. I remember how the floor creaked in specific areas and how the quiet walls held volumed words to create a home for the people who visited maybe listening to their silent thoughts. I remember the sound of shoe heels walking across the floor, the echo of a sneeze, the whispers of two people talking, the silence of an elderly man reading in a chair.

I remember when I wasn’t so little anymore and my reading progressed and I checked out Judy Blume books without my mom’s knowing and with her knowing, books by best-selling author priest at the time, Andrew Greeley. Because after all, she had The Thorn Birds written by Colleen McCullough permanently displayed on her bedside table which tells me we were both secretly dazed and confused with reading scandalous romances that involved a priest or were written by one.

I remember visits to my grade school library because library time was scheduled into our weeks.

When I was close to entering high school, I remember this library branch closed after a new one was built a block up the street across from the Potawatomi Conservatories next to the zoo. This building was modern, airy, and carpeted. The wood shelves and desks and magazine racks in the old location warped into memory. The vintage card catalog cabinets were replaced with a new computerized system. In the new location, everything metal was staged in a different light including the new advertising sign erected next to the sidewalk, its blue neon lettering flashing information about hours and events and holidays. Things changed for bigger and better. But was it?

I do not remember my high school library. What does this say not about the school but about me?

I remember my college’s expansive library with a wide-open floor plan, a building built in 1982 to replace the original library. Occasionally, I entered the eighty-six thousand square foot building in the first few years when I felt lost and confused about my choice of school and being a business major when I was nearly failing finance class. Once I changed my major to sociology, I befriended the library more and more yet not nearly enough.

I married a reader. While living in Southern California during our early years of marriage, I remember our Friday nights consisting of dinner and a movie and when not a movie, a trip to our local Barnes & Noble where for an hour or two, we got lost among the books and from each other.

Book stores became my local library while I experienced a jumble of life changes—getting married, moving cross country to where I knew nothing and no one, my dad’s death, my first pregnancy, my husband going to graduate school, the fact that we moved nine times in eleven years, seven of those being cross country moves. When they were littles, I remember taking our children to Barnes & Noble story time, Borders Books & Music, and BAM!, Books-A-Million. Why we weren’t visiting the library I do not know other than believing it was just a matter of the ebb and flow of things.

Time moves at an unfathomable speed. Twenty years ago, we moved back to the Midwest to a near west suburb of Chicago. With three young kids and one on the way, I remember passing a quaint stone building with a pitched roof and leaded glass windows. Tucked in by mature Elm and Maple trees, the library was one of my first stops in the village. Originally housed in a small storefront, the library was founded by English building contractor, Thomas Ford, who specialized in stone houses until his unexpected death in 1926. His wife Edith donated property and money for the current library building that was completed in 1932 with a facade of Lannon stone from a quarry in Wisconsin. Symbolic images of a quill, “Aladdin’s lamp”, the Oak leaf, acorns, an artist’s palette, a flower, ship with sail, and an anchor adorn the exterior stonework. When I noticed the building, I sensed a feeling of home and got a library card, my first in several years.

I remember taking my children to story time in the lower-level children’s section of the library. I remember taking them to sign up for summer reading series’ that promised plastic prizes and coupons for ice cream. I remember taking them to find books for school reports and choose books that jumped out at them from the shelves. On rainy days, we went to the library so my children could board the reading train and sit on the benches in the train cars reading books that transported them around the world. I remember their wandering through aisles of written stories and exploring the children’s play area because as my mother had done with me, I wanted to introduce them to the importance of reading whether they took to it or not.

Ten years ago, I remember contacting the library to see if it was possible to reserve a space to hold the bi-monthly meetings for the writing group my friend and I started. I remember the first meeting of the Western Springs Writers’ Society in the boardroom where a rectangle table with eight chairs was crammed with thirty writers. I remember the back table underneath a window my friend and I occupied every Tuesday when we were in a writing groove but then were interrupted when the world shut down.

I remember the library fines I paid because I could never return a book on time. I remember coming close to having to pay to replace a book or two. I remember when the library stopped collecting fines and, suddenly, I became responsible and returned books within their due date.

Earlier this month, the Saturday sun begged me out of the house with an opportunity to visit Geneva, Illinois, a soothing town near the Fox River with several local boutiques, cafes, restaurants and two of my favorite spots: Graham’s 318 Coffeehouse that makes the lightest sugar-melting-in-your mouth glazed donuts and Graham’s Fine Chocolates & Ice Cream where through the front window, I can watch chocolatiers drizzle dark chocolate designs on their confections. Instead of inhaling sugar this day, I ventured to a place that is just as vibrant as the foot traffic on 3rd Street. The Geneva Public Library. The expansive parking lot was filled with cars. The outdoor children’s discovery walk was abuzz with parent conversation and children’s squeals. Colorful and bronze sculpture stands outside the building and in. As soon as I stepped inside the bright lobby, a librarian welcomed me from the half-moon shaped circulation desk. A spacious sitting area with shelves of available books and natural light from floor to ceiling windows is opposite of the entrance to the Kids Landing, a learning space for kids from infancy through eighth grade, which engulfs most of the main floor.

The energy of the library was that of a busy bookstore and continued to the second floor with the Teen Takeover room, an employee dusting books, shelves, and genre signage, the DIY Workshop, and a second circulation desk where I spied an array of free stickers on the counter that make me wonder if we are ever too old for stickers. I decided no but left the stickers for local readers and walked on to browse the wide section of tall bookshelves that house over thirty-five Book Club Bundles, transportable bags filled with ten books and an information sheet to lead discussions. With this vast option available, a Book Club has never been easier to start or continue.

I glanced into study rooms occupied by a group of three teen boys talking with their books open, a woman practicing a speech, another woman preparing something that looked high tech since she had three computers open and even more intense in the next room, a man stood with his hand to his pursed lips studying an extravagant math equation written on a white dry erase board. Remembering that math is not my expertise, I continued to move along the windowed wall where the sun draped comfy reading chairs and study desks used by tweens and teens and adults of every age. From a coffee table, I picked up a free word search with Al Pacino’s Movies and a Level 1: Intermediate Kakuro. What is Kakuro?

Humoring myself with being interested in this mathematical version of a crossword puzzle, I found a pair of relaxed chairs in a corner next to the windowed wall where through it, the American flag stood at my eye level. A man who had just check out a book asked if I needed the other chair. I didn’t. While he sat and read in the sunshine, I watched the flag. Every so often, it caught the soft breeze and lifted to a half wave while below, a steady pattern of library patrons entered and exited the main entrance. The longer I watched this coming and going of information seekers, the more cars seemed to pull into the parking lot. The longer I watched the movement of the flag, the more it fluttered with vigor. 

But what caught my eye most about the stitching of the red, white, and blue was not the expressive stripes or stars or the metal ball that capped the flagpole. What I couldn’t take my eyes off was the large, beaded retainer ring that stood out like the sun after days of gloom. The white beads looked fresh as puff clouds despite undoubtedly facing hail, humidity, sheets of cool rain, and blistery snowfall. While I sat among shelves of alphabetized books and displays showcasing Local Authors, Trending Now, Black History Month, New Nonfiction, New Fiction, New Science Fiction, Coffee Table, New Large Print, New Romances, and President’s Day, I continued to read the prose of the anchor of glossy beads loosey wrapped on the bronze pole, a snagged red thread from one of the stripes stuck like an apostrophe between two of the beads.

Have I noticed a beaded retainer ring before? Have I sat this close to a raised flag before? Is there anything better than to visit the library and be checked out with a good book, a new idea, a meaningful thought, gained knowledge, your imagination, or the joy of surprise?

Until I write to you again, I hope a visit to your library offers you unexpected delight. Every day is a beginning. Rush slowly and be surprised.

Marie