Red Room Where the Writers Are

I love libraries and librarians.  It is unbelievably wonderful to me that I can walk into my local library, borrow almost as many books as I want (there is a limit of fifty, but who can carry that many?), read them at my leisure, and bring them back, all without a penny exchanged or deposit put down.  Our local library here is terrific.  Almost always, when I read a book title somewhere and think, "hmm, that sounds interesting, I think I'd like to read it," our library already has the book.  On those rare occasions when they don't have the book, some lovely person at the library will put out feelers to other libraries to see if they can borrow the book somewhere just so I can read it.  What a deal!

Several days ago, I went to the library only to pick up a reserve, Faye Kellerman's "The Mercedes Coffin,"  but wandered by the new non-fiction shelf and somehow ended up with an armful of books.  I found, "Free for All:  Oddalls, Geeks, and Gangstas in the Public Library," by Don Borchert; "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the White House: Humor, Blunders, and Other Oddities from the Presidential Campaign Trail," by Charles Osgood; "True Enough: Learned to Live in a Post-Fact Society," by Farhad Manjoo; "I Don't: A Contrarian History of Marriage," by Susan Squire; "Homo Politicus: The Strange and Scary Tribes That Run Our Government," by Dana Milbank; and "The Lady Elizabeth," by Alison Weir (about Queen Elizabeth I prior to her coming to the throne).  Then I got hold of myself, picked up "The Mercedes Coffin," from the reserve shelf, and got myself out of the way of more temptation.

I finished Faye Kellerman's book that first evening, thankful to find that it was possible to rock twin babies and hold a book all at the same time.  Then I read Don Borchert's book on libraries, which I recommend to anyone who loves to read (and is there anyone reading this who doesn't love to read?); that loving, lively, hysterically funny book is what triggered these library memories.

I can't think of any other use of my tax dollars that I enjoy more than I do the libraries.

Librarians are just as wonderful.  People who love books and who get paid to help us find books, learn about books, enjoy books--definitely my kind of people.  I love the conversations with them when I'm checking out my books, the exchange of information and opinions on something beyond the weather.

Here are my favorite librarian stories:  A few years ago, I was at work when there was a power outage.  A small group of us happened to be off-site for training and we got a little bored.  After poking around, we came across a Scrabble game and started to play.  I used the word 'da' and got challenged, and we couldn't find a dictionary.  Being more than a little stubborn and knowing darned well that 'da' was a word, I dug in my heels and wouldn't concede the point.  Knowing the all-around wonderfulness of reference librarians in general, I called our local reference librarian and explained our impasse.  She joked about the way we were spending our time at 'work,' then got out a dictionary and explained to my opponents that 'da' was in fact a word in English, giving them the definition and derivation.  We happily thanked her for her help and continued our game.  How handy is that?  After all, this was before Google and, anyway, the power was out.

My other librarian story comes from my hometown.  When the six of us were little, Mom would take us to the library once a week.  She kept track of our books by removing the cards from the front of each one, then rubberbanding the cards together and putting them safely out of reach in a kitchen cupboard.  The next week, she would get out the big cardboard box, put it on the kitchen table, and send out the call for books.  We would each do our best to gather all of our own books and line up at the table, where Mom would match each card to its own book and put that book in the box.  Any cards left over would get that darned kid sent off to find that darned book, and woe to him or her who didn't know where it was.  Mom would then load the box and the six of us into the car and head across town to the library, where she would take the box to the desk to get the books checked in while the six of us scattered to the wind to grab our next week's supply of reading material.  After a bit, she would gather us all and bring us to the checkout desk, where dozens of books, one after the other, would get stamped out and put into the box for the ride home.  At home, Mom would put the box back on the kitchen table and remove the card from each book while we all waited impatiently to get our particular selections out of limbo.  (I think they must have waived the fifty-book limit for Mom--we had to have gone over it countless times.)

I bet Dad loved those trips to the library.

Our library was one of the old Carnegie ones, with a small section for children's books.  Sometimes Mom would go off into the adult section, telling us to come get her when we were ready.  I remember the trepidation with which I trespassed into that section in search of Mom, knowing that at any moment some librarian might swoop down to tell me that I didn't meet the height requirement for that part of the library.  That never happened, but I always expected it.  

Then we got a new library, bigger and with many more shelves and a children's section almost as big as the other library's entire space.The adult section was so big it was like being an explorer when I tried to find Mom.  (Somehow she always seemed to be as far away from the children's section as possible.  I wonder why?)  That was the library where I first got to check out books from the adult section, a truly life-changing experience.  I think I looked at the books many times before daring to touch one, and I remember pulling books with interesting titles off the shelf to touch them wonderingly long before I had the courage to actually check one of them out.  Someday way back when, though, the heady thought came to me that I could check out one of those mysterious books that had only words, no pictures, and I took that enormous step, propelling myself willy-nilly into a magical world of neverending enchantment.

Then I grew up and joined the Navy.  I was away from home for four years and when I got back, I felt all grown up.  After all, I had been in the military, worn a uniform, traveled OUTSIDE CALIFORNIA.  I even spent two of those years in Japan.  I had to be grown.  A friend of mine was spending six months in Operation Deep Freeze down at McMurdo in Antarctica, so I went to the library to get a bunch of used paperbacks to send to her.  (They read a lot, those Operation Deep Freeze folks.)  When I walked through the door of the library, I was instantly a child again, as the librarian at the desk looked up and said to me, without missing a beat, "before you leave, we have a book for your mother."  I chose my armful of used paperbacks, then dutifully went to the checkout desk to pick up my mother's reserved book.  So much for being grown.

The babies have colds, so probably lots of rocking and reading today.  TwinOne sneezed spectacularly yesterday; until then, I hadn't known that much snot could come out of that tiny a nose.  Thank goodness for tissues impregnated with lotion.  And for nasal syringes; I went out before dawn this morning to buy one and have already used it on both.

A note on tissues and snot:  I was stationed in Japan for two years, from 1981 to 1983.  One day, while wandering through a local department store, I came across a box of tissues.  Emblazoned right across the box were the words, "For Your Snot."  I kid you not.  I was there, I was sober, I read those words on that box, but in an act of incredible idiocy, I didn't buy any.  Drat.  How wonderful would it have been to have had a box of tissues so uncompromisingly clear in its purpose? 

A

Where