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I'm stuck inside this summer, watching my favorite season stroll slowly by my window
while I try to keep my four-month-old baby from the ill effects of the heat. I tried to
make myself feel better for not spending more time in the sun by remembering that there
was always a point in every summer when the thermometers would threaten to burst and a
"red tide" would make the Long Island Sound waters where I lived unswimmable.
Those were the days when I needed the public library most. And, in those days, it was
there for me.
On a recent trip home to visit my parents, on such a day as the one I just described, I
made my way to the public library, which along with my parents' passion for books, started
me on my path to lifelong reading and writing. I know that Miss Csolko, the lanky woman in
the thin cardigan and the glasses linked around her neck on a simple gold chain, would not
be there to greet me. But I wondered if all the little tables were still in the children's
reading room and if all my favorite orange-spined biographies were still stocking the
shelves as they did when I spent months reading each and every one. I wondered if that
same respectful stillness would affect the way I walked the squeaky linoleum floors or if
the adult section would still smell the same, a perfumey wafting there that didn't exist
in the candy-flavored kids' room. Would I start to cry walking in after so many years,
thinking about how much this place meant to me as a child? Would there still be the
railings where I tied up my bike, returning proudly to fill its steel over-the-seat
baskets with the books I would read that week? Would my name still be in the copy of
Lillian Hellman's PENTIMENTO that I took out of the library the week my grandfather died,
that trip to the library being the last thing we did together before he left us, when he
told me to not copy Hellman's rather wanton ways of living with men she hadn't married?
What would it be like?
I strapped my daughter into her baby carrier and made the still familiar trip to the
library. Passing my old school, the houses of childhood friends, I felt like I should have
been led through the streets by the Ghost of Summer Afternoons Past. The air was hot,
hazy, wired, as though it sensed my anticipation. The stillness hinted at my caught breath
--- as we walked down the block, I almost burst into tears. And then I saw the sign.
A plain white paper attached to the door at the top of concrete steps told me that I would
have to come back. The library was only open two days a week, for very specific hours, and
if I wanted something now, I would have to head all the way downtown to the main branch
for my book needs. Two days a week? The library, when I was a child, was open every
day, sometimes Sunday, too, in the summertime. And it was open all day --- 9 to 7. I could
go after school, before dinner, in between dance class and Girl Scouts. We went once a
week with my mom as babies (I was three when I got my first library card) and several
times a week with our teachers in grade school. I studied there for the SATs and
researched material there on my breaks from college. What did kids do now that it was
barely available to them?
Hard economic times have proved painful to public programs, we all know that. But somehow
I envisioned the library as one of the things that would always be protected. When I was a
child, I fantasized about being a famous writer and coming back to this library to bestow
upon it some thanks, new books, or a wing named after my favorite writer. Later, learning
that novelist Maureen Howard had grown up in Bridgeport as well, I wrote to her to see if
she remembered this branch and if it meant anything to her as well. I always assumed that
if the library fell on hard times there would be someone there, some rich entrepreneur,
who would make sure that it never had to close its doors except at night. To know that its
doors had been shut for many days at a time without availing its wonders to the masses
actually pained me. What could I do to help?
I'm still trying to figure that one out. And I feel sorry for the kids who don't know the
joys of being 10 years old, riding the familiar streets between home and this dream
factory, heart barely contained in thinking of entering this place where everything was
available between the covers of books, the world's most remarkable creation. To this day,
the click of my bike lock against metal immediately brings back the smell of the
honeysuckle outside and the sound of thin white pages flapping, my search for my next
week's bounty, mounting dreams that to this day have never died. I hope that there are not
that many other libraries out there that are suffering the same fate. Make use of your
local library and enjoy its existence --- take your kids and let them experience the joy
of sharing books that others have enjoyed for years before them. After all, when the
summer gets too hot for us to be outside, books will help you travel to new worlds without
having to worry about sunscreen, melanoma, and heat stroke. It's safe, it's healthy, it's
as important as breathing.
--- Jana Siciliano
(c)
Copyright 2001, Bookreporter.com. All rights reserved.
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