Library love

When I was a little girl my mom would take us to the Elko County Library.  There was a part of it that was sunken with two steps going all around the lower part.  I would gather up all sorts of exotic picture books and look at them while waiting for my mom.  Then, my mom would let me take home as many of the books as I wanted.  It was magical.

Sometimes we'd go to the cramped little Wells library which was a marvel in space usage.  There were a lot of books crowded in there.  I was sort of afraid of the librarian because she was old and had a scratchy voice but I also saw her as a benevolent fairy godmother that made it possible for me to take home books with the wave of her stamp pad.

I loved taking my babies and toddlers to story time at the library.  Braeden and I would go to the New Haven and Hamden libraries in Connecticut.  I'd cart Emma along too once she was born.  We went to the library during our brief stint in California and a week or so after we first moved to Washington, I was at the toddler library program with two-year old Emma and there was an earthquake.  I held her under a table and she screamed because she was scared and her mother was holding her under a table. (There wasn't room for me under the table because all the mothers were getting their kids under there so I was holding Emma under the table along with a bunch of panicked strangers.  It freaked her out.)

She got over it though.

Mark wasn't that great at toddler library times but he also got over that.  He hasn't been kicked out of anyplace for a while.  Juuuuuust about have him domesticated.

I get the most bang for my taxpayer buck at the library.  At any given time I have about five library books in my house and I usually have at least that many on hold. 

I love the library.

During Mark's swim program I go to the Snohomish library.  It is a palatial wonder compared to the tiny Mill Creek library.  I love it there.  I sit at a table by a big window and tap away on my laptop or pull out a book to read and it is quiet and marvelous.  When the sun is shining through the window it is pretty much paradise.

Yesterday, the couple at a nearby table caught my attention because they smelled kind of terrible.  They seemed to be somewhere in their mid fifties.  The man was reading a newspaper and the woman, who looked incredibly bored, was reading a Garfield comic book.  She'd read for awhile and then stare off into space.

I won't discredit the literary value of Garfield comic books though.  Braeden used to read them along with Heathcliff comic books during silent reading time.  It was all I could get him to read.  He eventually got bored with them, like I thought he would, and turned to other books.

The woman at the library may venture into more complicated tomes soon.  I would have pointed out a few interesting choices to her but my own children shun what I recommend so I didn't think I'd have much success.

As I was leaving the library, reluctantly because being there is the most sublime part of my day, I noticed an older man reading on a computer screen.  He caught my eye because the words he was reading were enlarged to about an inch tall.  He was reading so close to the screen he was practically touching it with his face.  I recognized the words he was reading.  It was the from the Bible.

I love the library.