A Stroll Through the Library

Age 9.  I stayed up until 3 finishing Maniac McGee

My fingers dance across a beat up copy of Deb Caletti's "Honey Baby, Sweetheart" and I smile to myself. It reminds me of sweaty hikes to the library during the summer before 9th grade. I place it back on the shelf, wondering just how many other girls have checked out this very same copy and found something meaningful inside. Farther down the aisle is "Secrets of Truth and Beauty" by Megan Frazer, a strange book from the summer after I turned 13 and graduated from middle grade to YA. I add two new books to my bag, head to the circulation desk, and pull out my ten year old ticket to new worlds. My library card that I got the summer before 4th grade at a library that has since been destroyed and rebuilt, bearing no resemblance to its original building. .Still, my library card remains the same. My shaky 3rd grade cursive is my signature on the back, I remember signing it and thinking about the episode from the TV show Arthur where they sing "Having fun isn't hard when you have a library card!" I felt powerful and grown up. I was responsible for my own books, my own adventures. 

Vacation, age 13 during a sci-fi phase.

It's strange to sit on the library floor and get so nostalgic, but I can't help it. I've spent the past seven summers hiking up the same sweltering hot hill in order to get to the library and fill my backpack up with as many books as I could carry. The library has been as synonymous to summer for me as ice cream and the beach. Leaving for college is hard, especially since I've never lived anywhere else. I feel like I'm saying goodbye to all those summers full of books that shaped me into the person I am today. Those sweaty hikes with my bag stuffed to capacity are some of the best memories I have of my childhood. 

I love my library because I know that all those books I checked out have been checked out by other people. People who loved them, hated them, found themselves within them just like I did. All these people who don't know each other are connected by the same book that always returns home to its place on the shelf. Somebody else has a story about a book I've read. That's magic.