My Life As a Library #1

A Tiny Backstory

As far back as I can remember, I have loved libraries. When I was a kid, I spent countless hours in my small town library.

By city standards, this library, which was one large room, would have been considered quite small.

But for me, it was huge. It was a place of comfort. And, most importantly, it had lots and lots of books.

I thought it must be just as charming as the Boston Public Library or even the New York City Library. Mind you, I had never been to either of those libraries, but I did see pictures of them.

My little library was a haven for me. I cherished my time there, and I loved Mrs. M, the librarian. She was super friendly and always cheerful.

I remember how excited she was to show me any new books that arrived, which she thought I might enjoy reading. I knew she loved that library and all those books as much as I did.

This tender memory of my sweet library sparked the thought for this blog post.

My Life Library

"Sometimes we will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory." - Dr. Seuss

Anyway, I like to imagine my life as a library. In this library, I gather, sort, and store my seven decades of life.

In my humble library, each stage of my time on Earth has a room of its own. There are a couple of big rooms, some medium-sized rooms, and some smaller ones.

Additionally, scattered about this lovely library are numerous cubbies. These cubbies hold all my little life experiences that, while fleeting, affected me in some way.

Often, I discovered much later that many of those moments, which seemed minor at the time, turned out to be some of my most precious. Many of those were hilarious too.

Oh, and I'll probably need a place to store some of the miscellaneous, awkward things that I've experienced in life.

These are things I said I was NEVER going to do again, and then I absolutely did some of them. Again.

Generally, quite a few of those (mis)adventures included wine and didn't turn out well. At all.

But I would be insincere if I didn't buck up and own every one of those wine-infused, faulty judgement incidents. They were my choice. I have no one to blame.

I'd feel better if I just stored those awkward incidents in some big trunks in a safe place in my library, like in the furthest reaches of the dark basement. Just kidding.

I acknowledge (and release) my past. It no longer defines who I am today. So, these memories will take their rightful place along with all the others.

The biggest, brightest room, though, is the most significant in the library.

It contains shelves and shelves of spiral-bound stories and endearing snippets from many chapters depicting the moments and spans in my life that I treasure most. Especially my chapters of motherhood and grandmother hood.

I just now decided that I will write more posts about my life as a library. Maybe make it a mini-series of sorts.

There is no way I can adequately cover in one post the many beautiful, heartwarming, life-changing, and hilarious excerpts of my life that this grand room in my library holds.

So, I will close this first post with a fun memory I'm pulling from a shelf that houses my gazillion motherhood recollections.

Through the Eyes of a Child

My youngest daughter was in elementary school. Each afternoon, it was an adventure for me when I pulled all the day's schoolwork out of her backpack.

In her haste to get the heck out of school and home to play, she stuffed her school papers into her backpack. Literally. They were always all crumpled up in a big wad.

Every day, I had to extract the messy wad of papers from her bag and smooth them out enough to be able to see what she had been working on in school.

On this day, as I smoothed and shuffled through her papers, I was taken aback by a couple of my daughter's answers to questions on a worksheet:

Teacher's Question: What is your mother's favorite meal to cook?

Daughter's Answer: Hot dogs.

Teacher's Question: What is your mother's favorite hobby?

Daughter's Answer: Jogging.

Me: WHY on Earth did you write either of those answers?

I never pretended to be the best cook on the planet, but hot dogs would have been my absolute LEAST favorite meal to prepare for my family.

Of course, then I was wondering what my daughter's classmates were sharing about their mothers' favorite meals.

Were the other moms serving up Japanese beef curry or shrimp ceviche or Tuscan chicken while I slaved over my special meal of hot dogs?

And then I had to deal with the jogging thing. That was almost too much to bear.

I shudder to think what the teacher must have been thinking when she learned that my favorite hobby was jogging.

At that time, I was overweight. In fact, I was quite a bit overweight.

One look at me and it was unmistakably clear that I was not a big fan of jogging. Actually, it was pretty darn easy to surmise that I wasn't fond of any exercise.

For as long as I could manage it, I avoided my daughter's teacher. I wasn't sure if it would take her days, weeks, or months, until she forgot about that particular worksheet.

Anyhow, and so it goes with children. And it is these beautiful, funny moments that have helped me build my life library.

Until next time...

Stay fearless, divine souls.