Quiet Space

I didn’t go to the protest yesterday because I had to work a shift at the library. I did drive by, though. A good two thousand people turned out in our neighborhood. The crowd stretched down to my street. My husband was one of the people. He was waving the American flag. 

The library was quiet when I got there. I know what you’re thinking. Isn’t the library always quiet? I mean, it is. But not in the old shushy way it used to be when I was a kid a million years ago. Now we’re a meeting place. We host community programs and school visits and lectures and English conversation classes. Patrons do work on the computers. Tutors tutor their students. Toddlers screech and laugh and throw tantrums. 

Every once in a while, a parent will warn their kid to be quiet, and I enjoy piping up to say, It’s okay. This isn’t a quiet space. You can talk. 

What’s quiet about the library is there’s never any background music blaring. Never any ads. No one ever tracks you or tries to sell you something. If you want to sit there all day, feel free. We have decent bathrooms and drinking fountains and comfy chairs. Also, if you want book recommendations, come up to the desk and I will give you some.

Everyone, no matter what their income level or ethnic background or immigration status, can check out a book. Or one hundred books. When I was a little girl, the library was my favorite place. I walked there with my mother and younger brothers. This was after my father died, and we didn’t have a car. The trip was about a mile and took us up a big hill and through a lovely, sprawling public park. 

The youth librarian was friendly and kind. She helped me pick out books, and after getting to know my reading taste, she’d have books chosen and waiting for me. Eight or ten, which is about all I could carry home. When I was eight, my mother remarried. We moved into a nice house. We owned a car. We were doing okay on the surface. But not far under the surface things were not good. Still, I had the library. 

I walked up the hill and through the park by myself. I read my way through the youth department. When I was eleven, I won a prize in the summer reading program, and the librarian took a picture of me holding a book and sitting formally in front of the big windows. In the photo I look somehow both shell-shocked and grateful. 

It is not an exaggeration to say that books saved my life, that the library did. 

I worked there all afternoon, missing the second protest in the city, the big one downtown. My husband waved the flag at that one too. I know why so many people were gathering. Fear. Anger. A desperate need to speak out against corruption in this administration, the creeping or already crept over authoritarianism, the cruelty. 

A reminder too that there are so many of us who care about what we are about to lose. Public schools and National Parks. Public Health and scientific research. And libraries, although, I suspect they are far down on many people’s lists of institutions worth fighting for. 

Meanwhile, I checked in books and checked them out. Chatted with a stranger about their favorite movie. Helped someone who was fiddling with a job application. Found the perfect book for a little girl and put it into her hands. 

  

First protest, 2014, to save school libraries, Art, and Music

Me, age eleven, in my quiet space, my happy place