I Went to the Library
...when my world was upside down.
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Newly married in July 2007, Cliff and I lived in an 800 square-foot, second-floor apartment with a small balcony beneath a tall sycamore tree and a tiny kitchen in which I loved to cook. Miraculously, we’d found a cheap, starter apartment in an expensive county, mere minutes from our church and a few more to his work.
We were blessed in that season, but among several things we couldn’t afford, at the time, was internet service. With Cliff at work and me in graduate classes and assistantship most of the day, our internet-less stretches weren’t much of a challenge, though. I had my own office and multiple university libraries at my disposal and was doing just fine.
In May of 2008, however, I graduated with my masters in education, completed my assistantship, and was jobless. Despite months of researching and applying for positions I was fully qualified for, the recession was winning, internet was scarce, and I felt lost in more ways than one.
That previous year, when I needed to send an e-mail or upload some coursework from home last minute, I’d been known to perch in the south-facing window of our bedroom to use our downstairs neighbor’s wifi. With his beachy, waist-length hair, preference to parade about shirtless, and the smoky patchouli that seeped from his apartment’s pores, I didn’t think he’d exactly mind.
This time, though, I needed a stronger signal, a clearer conscience, and a reoriented sense of self. So I did the only thing I could think to do at a time like that:
I went to the library.
In 1993, I was eight years-old and newly transplanted to the city of Virginia Beach, another move added to my growing collection. This one, though, was furthest away from anything I’d known, a straight shot southeast from the Appalachian foothills of Western Maryland, my birth state, to a large and diverse city on the Atlantic Coast.
My stepfather’s1 work had taken him out of town, so we followed behind, settling in a three-bedroom townhome in the center of town, a five-minute walk from the Central Library.
A new state was a new world, but the library, even a new one, felt familiar.
Three days was all it took for me to finally walk over there and make myself right at home. All glass, metal, and white, it was the most modern building I’d ever seen. But inside, the books smelled just like they were supposed to. Like promise. Like comfort. Like hope. Standing tall with their spines out and strong, the stories waited, ready to see me through yet another dizzying chapter of my life.
I’d learned early to make friends with books in school libraries and quiet afternoons with my grandmother, sipping Lipton black tea with milk and sugar. Between visits, she’d fill paper bags for me at the Quince Orchard and Rockville libraries’ sales, spending a dime or even a penny a book, sometimes.
I didn’t yet know the immeasurable wealth of those early years of learning to love books, I just knew that in their company everything felt better.
Our four years and some change in that townhouse was the longest I ever lived in one home until my current one. These were years that included: a break-in, hurricanes, separation and divorce, my first year of middle school, and far more than I can begin to tell in one sitting. It’s taken years, in the present, to unpack these years of my past, the ones that span the exact ages of our youngest and oldest children right now.
It was there, though, at Central, that I learned to make my own way to the library, and with all that independence I was given, a new foundation was built.
Eventually we left Central and moved to another part of town.
And then another. And another. And another. And still, another.
Schools changed, friends came and went (some left in scribbles on the pages and cracks of yearbooks I rarely got). But no matter where I went or whom I met, books remained. They were the same on every self in every library, precisely where they were meant to be or, if not, easily found.
There is a formula and science to visiting the library, and I liked that I could count on that in my childhood. But eventually, I learned to see the mystery in it, too, a growing sense of God meeting me there in the stacks, the joy of wandering and discovery — even finding the love of my life.
Our meet cute wasn’t two hands reaching for the same book on a shelf, but a charming guy scanning a shy, young lady’s ID card for convocation credit after a campus event. In the second-floor, multimedia room of the Lila D. Bunch Library at Belmont University, we exchanged names and innocent flirtations. I went home certain this guy was different in a place that was more than familiar.
It took a library to disarm me and defy all my expectations.
Because as it turns out, I was right.
A couple of years later, graduated and living in my first, non-campus apartment, I nursed the strain of our long distance relationship with ten minute walks to the Green Hills branch of the Nashville Public Library. There, I’d send e-mails to the man I loved where he lived in South Sudan and borrow non-academic books, short on the cash I’d have used, as a grad student, for wifi and trips to buy books at the Borders near campus.
Living in such a posh part of town made me feel out of my depth, despite having been in Nashville already for four years. But as a fledgling adult out of the college nest, having a library so close made it all that much more home. Even now, I keep a NPL library card as a neighboring county resident and pop in when I’m nearby.
From those early days at just eight, I learned to go to the library when I’m feeling unmoored and need to make sense of whatever about life is new and confusing. And in my beyond fledgling, full-grown adult phase of life, this has been more true than ever.
Mothering an infant, then toddler and infant, then preschooler, toddler, and infant? Go to the library.2
Wide open summers with school-aged children filled with endless curiosity and energy? Go to the library.
Writing pages and pages of your first book with a whole lot of uncertainty and even more hope? Go to the library.
Making sense of your first experience with all three kids at the same school? Go to the library.3
Trying to rhythm in homeschool days no one anticipated? Go to the library.4
New waves in life and it’s time to find anchor? Go to the library.
Sometimes, I go with purpose. Other times, I go in aimless.
I may go simply for the quiet or to be alone, but in community. I might have kids with me clamoring to pick new books off the shelves, attend a program, or play a round of checkers by the big tall windows. I may go to work remote for hours without having to buy coffee or food or wrangle for space and block out music.
I might go just to pick up a few holds or pay a fine. I might go just to dream a little, find where my books will live on the shelves, one day, and be reminded how glad I am that there are things I don’t know… yet.
I might go when I’m out of town and curious to learn the character of a place through its local library. I may go in a big city and bring a little bit of work to do in one of my favorite reading rooms in existence.
But always, I go with that same sense of promise, comfort, and hope I’ve always known and most often to the library who’s been home to me for sixteen years, welcoming me with open, sliding, glass arms, in all of my assorted seasons.
Even the ones to come.
Thank you for reading,
At the time…
I cannot tell you how many almost-terrible days have been saved by library programming or just-because visits to browse and play.
The 3/4s of a year I had all three in the same school — one 12hrs/week preschool, one K, and one 2nd, my first volunteer position I eagerly signed up for was in the school library. Surprise, surprise.
Even when it was closed, we’d pick up holds curbside and sit under the big tree under its front lawn to read.
Some of my fondest memories are of going to the library as a child. Thank you for this essay.
A memoir in libraries! This is wonderful, Kristine, thank you.