Stranger in a Familiar Land
Last couple of weeks, at my mom’s insistence, I’ve been going with her to her meditation class in Palmer. Meditation is nothing new to me – I do it all the time – but this is Tao meditation, not the zen or musing meditation I’m used it. It’s different, but that’s not the point. The point is that afterwards I have a free hour while mom is at her Tai Chi class to wander around Palmer. Naturally, like a magnet, the Palmer Library draws me in.
Returning to the Palmer Library felt like returning home. For years it was the better of the two closest libraries, so it was the one I ended up at the most. Due to… well, everything I suppose… I haven’t been in there for nearly five years. I find it mind boggling that it has been so long, but it has. It’s strange and unsettling both how much the library has changed1, and how much it has stayed the same. Many of my old, papery friends are still there – familiar bindings and time-stained pages, crisp and yellowed. Battered by the years and yet still holding on.
I think I managed to freak out the librarians – none of them know me, and yet I know the library so well. They don’t seem to know what to do with me. The last time I went though there was one librarian who knew me from before, and she even recognized me and mentioned that my help had been missed – I used to volunteer for every summer for Summer Reading Program, and I was good at it. I wish I wasn’t too old for the program, though I suppose I could still volunteer to help out.
There is something special about libraries – not just the weight of the words, but the weight of how many times those words have been read. The smell of old paper, the cooled air, the warm square of sunlight, and quiet hush… Just that has repaired so much of the old hurt. I hope I manage to keep going, and that libraries don’t fall by the wayside once again.
- the most notable change is that the YA section has tripled, going from an island bookshelf in the children’s section to six ceiling-high shelves at the front of the library. The number of computers has quadrupled too. ↩
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