Meanderings of a musing bibliophile

Ever since I was little, I have been slightly in awe of librarians. I’ve always suspected they have the most secretly joyful and subtly enviable profession out there in the world. Imagine, sitting all day in the middle of a room packed full of books. Old, brittle, well-read books that are perhaps outdated but none the less beloved. Books worn by curious hands, careful and uncareful, but yearning all the same. Yearning for something, whether they find the answer between the books’ pages or not. Yearning until they are satisfied and a new yearning takes its place; or yearning always unsatisfied in star-crossed happiness. The library is as much about the people who read the books as it is about the books themselves.

When I was little, I was also slightly in awe of librarians because my particular librarian, the one who checked me in and out when I came and went with my mother and our armloads of books, was stern and dower with a set scowl on her face, disinclined to talk or to smile. In my beautiful, young world, I had never met a grown-up who disliked me so I didn’t quite believe this could be the case with her, but certainly she didn’t appear to like me very much. In fact, what scared me a little bit was that I suspected that she was actually mad at me, for some past offence I didn’t know I had committed and for which, being unaware of what it was, I could never atone myself. The librarian never hesitated to tell people to hush up when they were being too loud, even when they were only little children, littler than I, there with their mothers. If you forgot to get your library card out before you set your books on the counter to be checked out, she just stared at you without saying anything until you realized your grave mistake. My library card, of course, was always ready, perched obligingly atop my book stack and I would stand on my tip toes and set the books down gently on the counter to avoid a reprimand.

The same lady is still my librarian and I wonder every time I go in if she remembers me growing up there. Year in and year out, I have tiptoed into that library, read, checked out books, studied, paid late fees. Sometimes months go by before I go in again. College studying and responsibility and a more expendable income make me a less frequent visitor of the dear old place. She never seems to change at all, though I’ve known her without knowing her for twenty one years.

But something is different. I’ve seen her laugh with some of the other librarians a time or two. And the other day when I went in I noticed that she got cold and had to put on her sweater – a very human action for someone I once suspected of being slightly supernatural. Also, I love her now, which always sheds a kinder light on people. I love her because I have known her almost all my life and I love her for what she represents to me and I love her for being slightly scary but good at her job just the same. I love her for all the things she must know and I love her for being the type of person I wish I knew better. And I’m not scared of her anymore.

The other day I took a walk to our new library to return a book. I love that I can walk to the library in less than five minutes now. Love that it’s tucked in right next to our puny city hall in what I think is the only shopping center belonging to this town. It is just a wee slip of a library. One small room with a handful of bookshelves lined up and a desk off to one side behind which the two librarians were standing. Two young, chatty, laughing librarians, eager to give us a tour of the room whose every corner we could already clearly see from where we were standing. They were nothing like my librarian. And yet, as I looked at them, standing there behind the library counter, I realized that the course of twenty years and the new, unfamiliar demeanors hadn’t changed anything. I am still in awe. Born of good-natured envy and heartfelt curiosity, and this great longing to spend my day sitting among these benevolent books. To walk around the little room and touch every one. To keep them shelved and organized; to hold the hand of a bright-eyed young reader and pull just the right book off the shelf and place it into his eager little arms. To make sure the bindings are crisp and the pages un-dog-eared and to tend to the old, worn tomes with glues and threads and presses. To be a keeper of books. To linger in the soft, dusty smell of them.

If my little corner bookstore ever comes into fruition – red brick mortared in, wooden bookshelves built up, small purring cat sprawled in a patch of sunlight. If I ever find myself behind an unassuming wooden counter, sipping hot tea, facing a little red door with a small bell eagerly anticipating the tentative entrance of some precious, curious customer, I hope that it will feel just like a library, warm and rich and full of the histories and heartbeats of the books and their authors and of the people who come to run their searching fingers along the shelves; old and young alike (books and customers), where money is only exchanged to keep the roof up and the cat fed. The kind of place that inspires fancy, and sagacity, courage. And awe.

-R.E.A.