For the Love of Libraries (and Librarians)

I can still remember the first time I visited a public library. I was about five and tagging along with my 12-year-old brother. It was the 1950s and I remember the high shelves crammed full of red and brown leather-bound books. Dust motes danced as the sun streamed in the tall windows.

Then there was the quiet. I’m sure I was told to shush at least once. Was this a church, I might have wondered?

Then my brother did the most amazing thing. He pulled a book off a shelf, took it up to a smiling lady, handed her a card and took the book home with him. I might have stopped breathing. If I could have uttered a sound it would have been “Wow”.

I knew that I loved that place and that someday I would have one of those cards so I could take books home too.

That same year, my kindergarten class walked to the library, holding hands, two by two. The librarian read us a story. We all got to pick out a book to take home. Wow.

In the 1960’s, they tore down that old library, replacing it with a modern building that I never liked quite as well. The books had colorful jackets with plastic covers. But I still loved the quiet and spent many an hour there, especially in high school when I had to do a term paper, usually at the last minute. And during the summer, loading up my arms with fun books to read for as many hours as I could get away with.

The first time I walked into the Powell library at UCLA as a freshman, I felt like I was in a cathedral. I craned my neck to look up at the domed inlaid ceiling and watched the dust particles dance in the shafts of sunlight slanting down from the second story windows. Footsteps echoed on the tile floor. Once again, I felt the hush and the reverence for learning that a library stands for.

I was stunned by the hundreds of thousands of books available to me just for showing my student ID card. I had to discipline myself to stick to the ones I needed and to not get lost in the stacks, rummaging through other volumes that seemed to want to jump off the shelves into my hands. I dropped out of UCLA at the end of my sophomore year. Marriage and motherhood filled the days in my new life.

But I missed being in school. I found refuge in my neighborhood library in San Francisco. My books would be crammed into the basket of the baby stroller, my baby sleeping (hopefully) in the front, so that I could have a few moments to browse the shelves. I loved the feel of this old brick library, the quiet, the overstuffed chairs, inviting readers to sink into them and read.

In those days, my books were usually overdue, having been lost somewhere under stacks of neatly folded cloth diapers, fresh from the laundromat across the street from my apartment.

After wrestling the stroller up the steep stone steps. I arrived, most often, sweating and a bit frazzled. A kind, gray-haired librarian with long dangly silver earrings, always greeted me with a smile. One day, as I was digging into my coin purse for my usual overdue fine, she announced, just loud enough for my hearing, “I’m not charging you any overdue fines when you come in on my shift.” I felt grateful and touched.

Another day, she pulled me aside and whispered, “You be sure to go back to college, now, you hear?”

Again, I was touched by her encouragement. I also took her advice. Three years later, after I dropped my three-year-old off at day care and walked back into that domed library at UCLA, student ID card again in hand, I thought of her with gratitude. In my graduation photo, two years later, I’m holding my six-year-old daughter’s hand and cradling her newborn sister.

As my daughters grew up, and we moved around, we always found local libraries and story times. I loved introducing them to the thrill of checking out books, reading them, then trading them in the next time for more. We’d read before bed, a quiet time after busy days, to settle in and snuggle close, to the soft melody of words and pictures.

Then there was the summer that my oldest daughter, Michelle, age nine, was reading books so fast that she’d read through the pile of books she’d check out—the limit of eight—in just a few days. Again, a caring librarian noticed that Michelle really read all those books that we’d balance as we wound our way out the door. She proclaimed that Michelle could check out as many as she wanted, no limit. I could read the unspoken wonder in my daughter’s eyes. Wow.

Years later, I took my two granddaughters, ages two and four, to a story time at the library near their home. Gone were the simple gatherings I remember when my children were tiny. Now we entered a special theater, with a sound system, puppets, and a large crowd. But they loved it. We even went to an evening ‘pajama story time’, where the kids, fresh from baths and smelling of soap, held teddy bears close and shuffled into the theater in fuzzy slippers and PJ’s. Everyone chuckled when the librarian showed up to read stories in her yellow robe, sporting giant, red, ladybug slippers.

With my granddaughters, our chosen books, the quiet, snuggling and sometimes giggling time of reading stories before bed felt even more precious, because I’d witnessed how quickly it had passed by with my own daughters.

My eldest granddaughter, Ellie, who was almost five, informed me in a solemn voice that her friend, Kianna, who was six, had her very own library card.

“Do you think, Grandma, when I’m five, that they’ll let me have my very own library card?”

The reverence in her voice made me stop and catch a breath. And remember, as I seem to do so often lately, that in my busy everyday life, I’m a part of something much bigger that I will ever understand.

I responded that yes, of course she could have her very own library card.

I looked at her face, her eyes, big with wonder, and could feel her unspoken word that hung in the air.

“Wow”.

For the Love of Libraries (and Librarians)

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