For a few minutes, we discussed their beauty. We both thought that all the librarians at the Bertram Woods branch were beautiful.
We talked about the order in which we were going to read them, a solemn conversation in which we planned how we would pace ourselves through this charmed, evanescent period of grace until the books were due.
It was such a thrill leaving a place with things you hadn’t paid for such a thrill anticipating the new books we would read. On the way home, I loved having the books stacked on my lap, pressing me under their solid, warm weight, their Mylar covers sticking to my thighs. It wasn’t like going to a store with my mom, which guaranteed a tug-of-war between what I desired and what she was willing to buy me in the library, I could have anything I wanted. Those trips were dreamy, frictionless interludes that promised I would leave richer than I arrived. I loved wandering around the shelves, scanning the spines of the books until something happened to catch my eye. Our visits were never long enough for me-the library was so bountiful. Together, we waited as the librarian pulled out each date card and, with a loud chunk-chunk, stamped a crooked due date on it, below a score of previous crooked due dates that belonged to other people, other times. Then, after a while, my mother and I reunited at the checkout counter with our finds. Even when I was maybe four or five years old, I was allowed to go off on my own. The library might have been the first place that I was ever given independence. We walked in together, but, as soon as we passed through the door, we split up, each heading to our favorite section. Throughout my childhood, starting when I was very young, my mother drove me there a couple of times a week. My family lived in the suburbs of Cleveland, about a mile from the brick-faced Bertram Woods Branch of the Shaker Heights Public Library system. I grew up in libraries, or at least it feels that way.
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