Introductions

Down in the youth department at the library it is joy-chaos. 

Our summer reading program has kicked off, and everyone and their mother is here to pick up their prizes. “What’s your name?” a little boy asks me. 

I don't answer for a moment. (I’ve never been asked this at the desk, and the kid is maybe eight? nine? and children this age, especially now, post-ish pandemic-ish, are, in my experience, shy. So, the question throws me off.) “Jody,” I say, after another beat. And then, a smile. “What's your name?”

“H-,” he says, smiling too. 

“Nice to meet you, H-!”

“Nice to meet you too, Jody!” He is over-the-top smiling when he leans forward and whispers, “My dad told me I should I introduce myself to people.” 

“That's a good idea.” I try to freeze his little face in my mind. I want to remember this child. I want to remember his name.

A few days later, at the farmer’s market in my neighborhood, I don’t ask people their names, but I chat with them during the transactions. The guy who sells the gorgeous peonies who gives me tips on transplanting. The lady who bakes rosemary bread and luscious Everything Bagel rolls. The woman who sells us our eggs. 

I've been buying eggs from her for four years, and I just now learn that she’s a teacher. The farmer’s market is her summer job.

I stroll home, past the feminist gift store and the breakfast taco place. The coffee shop where they have live bands on Friday nights. Chalk scrawled on the sidewalk in front of the used bookstore: I hope you heal from the things you don't talk about. 

Who wrote this and how did they know it was me? 

At the library H- introduces me to his little brother and their grandmother. They’re regular patrons here and finally we are properly introduced. The boys pick out their summer reading prizes. Their grandmother chats with me about books. 

A mom, another regular, must have been watching our interaction. When it’s her turn at the desk, she calls me by name. She tells me hers, and we greet each other like old friends. 

On Robot Recipes and Baby Storytimes

This week some writers I know were quietly freaking out about the new AI Chapgpt.

Apparently, you can ask it to write books. Oh my God, my writer friends say. What if the robots put us all out of business? As I am not presently in the business, I have been watching this conversation with some amusement. Okay, sure, someone's going to ask AI to write a book, and some publishing company is going to publish it, and some people will fork over the twenty-something bucks for it, 

but some people buy pet rocks.  

Meanwhile, my computer-programmer son asked AI to write him a recipe for a stir fry that featured "local vegetables and ground lamb." The AI generated all of the ingredients and the steps. At the end of the recipe, it added: "Enjoy!" The meal was delicious, my son said. We live in a strange new world. 

But I forgot all of that the other day. I was busy. The library's weekly Baby Storytime needed a sub, and I’d volunteered. Another co-worker partnered up with me and it was a good thing too. I really had no idea what I was doing. Read a story? Sing a song? I wasn't exactly sure what Baby Storytime entailed.

Turned out it was a Whole Big Thing. Props. Bins of toys. An iPad loaded with music we were meant to play. A PowerPoint so parents could sing along. But these parents were pros. Many of them come every week. They know the rhyme tunes and the fingerplay gestures. We all had a blast, and I didn't think it could get any more fun, but then, my co-worker brought out the bubble machine. 

The library has a bubble machine? How did I not know this? In only a few seconds bubbles shot out all over the room. 

I'd been sitting on the floor throughout the story-time, and I stayed there, watching the toddlers dance after the bubbles, the babies crawling around or still plunked on their parents' laps. I was having weird flashbacks to library story-times when my own kids were little. The weird part is that many of the parents in the room are the age of my kids now.

But here's a fun fact: no matter how much time has passed, you never forget the words to the "Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round" and "If You're Happy and You Know It, Clap Your Hands." 

For a moment, this strange new world is familiar again. I clap my hands.   

AI chatgpt-created Stir Fry with Lamb and Vegetables

Bubbles at Baby Storytime

Delightful Blather at the Library

Last week the circulation manager at the library where I work was shelving books and I was sitting at the help desk and the two of us were chatting how we do--I can't remember what we were talking about--but I said something about how we could blather all day, and just then a patron nearby piped up that he liked that word,

blather

and why don't people say it anymore? Well, I have no idea, I responded, but I say it all the time. Which got the three of us talking about other words like that, my favorite being the word delightful, something the circ manager often says, and every time she says it, I think: I like that word. 

Delightful. 

I want to say it more. 

How perky it sounds and how happy, especially on gray cold days, January sliding into February, and all of the crappy news of the world, the terrible ways we treat each other on display again and again, it's hard sometimes to remember how people, the world, can also be delightful.   

I just looked up the definition of delightful and it means "causing delight," and so I looked up delight, and that means "please someone greatly," which pretty much captures it. It was me the other day having a ten-minute discussion with a four-year-old and his grandfather about the library's broken elevator. (Long story about the broken elevator) but the delightful part of it was how curious and concerned the kid was and how patiently the grandfather explained how elevators work (or don't work, as the case may be),

or another day when a preschool class of kids tromped inside out of the cold weather and a little boy kept tromping right over to the desk and hugged me, no idea why, but I'll take it. That day, my husband and I had to get a new furnace, and when I got home, the dog was closed up in a bedroom, frantic about noisy strangers in the house, and I went up to keep her company, which only sorta alleviated her stress. 

Probably because I was borderline frantic myself, thinking about how much money a furnace replacement was going to cost us. Plus, it was cold in the house. Later, when the new furnace was at last installed, I could hear my husband and the furnace guys downstairs blathering, laughing like old friends. 

Right then the heat cranked on and wafted through the vents, and let me tell you, it was absolutely delightful. 

 

Hello I am very loud

maybe it's the blaring music I listened to as a teenager, the concerts where you walk out of the stadium with your ears ringing, and now, the hearing loss is finally catching up with me. And/or maybe it's an old habit left over from being a teacher and public speaker. Also, my aversion to holding a microphone (I don't like how my hand shakes when I'm holding one), but no big deal because I CAN PROJECT MY VOICE. 

The problem is sometimes I do that, even when the situation does not call for it. A quiet restaurant. A conversation in someone's living room with family or friends. One of them shushes me, and I immediately vault back to being a child, the keeper of secrets who told, and 

was told: You have a big mouth. In my defense, the earlier times I told, and told quietly, no one seemed to hear me. 

This is all to say that Me and Being Loud go way back. But I wasn't thinking of any of this the other day at the library. I was at the help desk, greeting patrons as they came in to pick up their holds, scurrying over to the fax machine to help someone fax a document, helping someone else at the printer,

having a long, very loud (I'll admit it) conversation with Mr. W., one of our regular patrons, someone I adore and know is hard of hearing so we all have to shout when we speak to him. 

It's my day today! he said. 

and I said, OH YOU'RE RIGHT, VETERAN'S DAY (because I know he is a proud veteran) THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR SERVICE! 

A short pause after he left to catch my breath, another patron heading over to the desk from the computer area, and what might he need help with? 

I have a complaint, he said, and I was all serious and ready to hear it. Trouble with the printer? A problem locating materials? An issue with our catalog, our magazine selection, a missing newspaper? 

You are very loud, he said, pointing at me. 

Oh. 

I stammered an apology and he went on. How he was trying to read and how very loud I was, over by the printer and at the computers and having very loud conversations with people at the desk. 

Oh, that. I started to explain about sweet Mr. W and how he is a regular patron and we know that he is hard of hearing. 

The man cut me off. Well, he should get his hearing problems taken care of! There was more grouching about how libraries have changed and not in a good way and aren't they supposed to be quiet and what was it with all of these people talking, all of these mothers and their crying babies and why couldn't they control their crying babies--

My ears were ringing at this point, worse than those blaringly loud concert nights, and now I was sputtering defenses of the people who needed help with the printer, the mothers with the crying babies (not that there were any around at the moment) but they were welcome in the library too, 

and Maybe, I said, gently, quietly, You would be happier at the main library, where there is a quiet room? Because this library, our library, doesn't have a quiet room. 

The manager came out then to resolve the situation, not that it could really be resolved. The man wanted quiet, wanted shushing, but the world has changed. Sometimes the library is loud. Some of our patrons are loud. I am loud. 

Or I guess I should say, I AM LOUD. 

I promise I'll try to keep my voice down in your living room or at a quiet restaurant, but when I am chatting with Mr. W, at the help desk, PLEASE DON'T SHUSH ME. 

A Library of Dresses

would be nice, but I don't think this is a thing. At least not where I live. What some people may not know is that there are all kinds of items--in addition to books, movies and music--available at their local library. 

At my library in Columbus, Ohio, for example, you can borrow a mobile hotspot, a tape recorder, and a light therapy lamp (the kind that helps you combat seasonal depression). At other libraries in our system there are jigsaw puzzles, boardgames, headphones, and a set of orange parallel parking cones. 

And at the lovely library in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, a place I visited a few weeks ago on my vacation, I found a delightful assortment of items ready for checkout, including a sewing machine, a tortilla press, a telescope, a ukulele, and a Halloween Monster cake pop pan, just in case you ever find yourself in need of one of those.  

I mean, LOOK AT THIS fun brochure:

But unfortunately, the Woods Hole Public Library does not offer dresses, specifically, a Mother of the Bride dress. 

Which is a giant bummer, because I could really use one of those right now. Instead, I trekked it out to the expansive outdoor mall in our area, accompanied by my husband, who is the best sport ever, the two of us dodging the crowd, the crowd itself, the main topic of our conversation. Who are all these people? I would say, or my husband would say. And then I would add, or he would add, 

And why are they here?

Why are WE here? was the follow-up question. But that answer was easy. Because the library does not offer Mother of the Bride dresses in the catalog and our daughter's wedding is in (gulp) eight weeks. 

Here is the thing about me and shopping: I don't like it. The rummaging through racks. The trying on of clothes. The part where you squint at the three-way mirror and realize that while the sorta okay dress looked sorta okay hanging on the hanger, it sorta does not look okay when it's hanging on you. 

Everyone and their mother is in this store right now, I text to my best friend and my daughter, who are both very kindly (virtually) nudging me along. And then after a beat, Wait, everyone and their mother really IS in this store right now. 

Turns out these dress shops are crowded with daughters shopping with their moms for homecoming dresses. There's a line to get into the dressing room. Crowds of teenagers traipsing past the fancy mother-of-the-bride-ish looking dresses toward the younger, more sparkly Homecoming-ish style.

Suddenly, I am flashing back to shopping trips with my daughter when she was in high school, the flinging of different sized dresses over the dressing room door, the oohs and ahs at my darling little girl turned lovely grown up young woman, the trip we took less than a year ago when she tried on her wedding dress, that dress not sorta okay at all, 

but stunning on the hanger, on her, a radiant soon-to-be-bride in eight short weeks! And Oh my gosh 

what am I doing, whining about trying on a dress (well, truthfully, A LOT of dresses) when I know one of them will turn out to be completely fine, and anyway, who even cares what I'm wearing, as long as it's hanging on me somewhat comfortably, my hand in my husband's hand, our daughter and son-in-law, our gathered family and friends, each of us in our bought/rented/borrowed clothing, so happy to be here

and all of us together. 

It's Father's Day

and I don't have a father. I mean, I did have a father, but he died when I was barely out of first grade, so I didn't know him. I had a stepfather for seven years, but he wasn't what anyone would've called a father. I don't think of him on Father's Day. 

On Father's Day I think of other fathers. My husband, for example, who is an excellent father. And his father; also, a good parent. Being raised by a good parent probably leads to good parenting, but it's not a prerequisite. Thank goodness, or else how many of us would be in trouble?

As a kid who did not have a father, I was curious about them. Friends' dads. Neighbors. Uncles. But for the most part I didn't give them much of a thought. And then Father's Day would roll around and it was time to make a Father's Day card in school and you'd see commercials of men grilling and fishing and how you should buy your dear old dad a tie or cologne or whatever. For me those commercials may as well have been talking about space aliens. And sometimes it hurt to be reminded of what I didn't have and would never have. 

All of this is to say that I try to be mindful when it comes to kids and whatever their particular family arrangement is. But the other day my mindfulness went out the window. What happened is I was working at the desk at the library and a mom came in with two kids. 

This one, she said, gesturing at a boy around twelve years old and happily bookish-looking, isn't mine. He's a neighbor and he wants to check out books today but he doesn't have a library card. 

I sat up straight, eager, of course, to help, but explaining the unfortunate but necessary rule that while minors may apply for a library card, they've got to have a parent or guardian with them to finalize the deal. 

The kid's shoulders slumped. 

But hey, I said brightly, you can ask your mom to come back with you later, or tomorrow. Fill out the application online. It takes like, three minutes. 

And then I had a better idea. Maybe, I said to the kid, you have a library card already? Your mom might've gotten one for you when you were little? I can check the system for you. 

The kid looked anxious, but hopeful. He gave me his name and birthdate, and sure enough, there he was in the system! I don't know who was more excited about it, him or me. Come back up to the desk, I told him, when you've got your books and I'll check you out. You can ask your mom for the card when you get home and if she's not sure where it is, the next time you come in, I'll give you a new one. 

He nodded and headed down to the youth section, but the neighbor mother lingered at the desk. I thought she was going to compliment me on my quick thinking and expert management of the problem, but instead, she leaned in a little and lowered her voice. 

Not a big deal, she said, and he never would've told you himself, but he doesn't have a mom. He's got two dads. 

Oh! I said. 

Not a big deal, the woman said again. Just thought you might want to know. 

I do, I said. Thanks! But internally I was still wincing, scrambling back through the earlier conversation, all of my mentions of mom and why had I made that assumption and here we are at the library, a place that strives to be safe and welcoming to all.

When the boy came up later to check out his books, I was still feeling like a ding dong. I didn't want to say Dad this time or Dads because I didn't want him to know what his neighbor had shared with me. Twelve-year-olds, I know from experience, don't feel comfortable learning that adults have been chatting behind their backs, and who can blame them. Instead, I said what I say to all of the patrons who stop by my desk. 

Have a nice day!  

And I do hope he had one, has one. Odds are, he will. A kid with two dads on Father's Day. My childhood self would've been over the moon. 

I'm a liar

Okay, maybe liar's not the right word, but sometimes when I write for you, I don’t tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth. For example, I tell you about how hot it is in the house, 

and not about the cigarette smoke swirling in the air. The Wordle my husband and I good-naturedly race each other to solve and not the times we snap and bicker. The dog I dote on and walk three times a day and not the one I had growing up who bit my mouth, my bottom lip swinging back and forth like a garden gate, the tooth-shaped hole straight through my cheek. The moral of the story is

don't kiss your dog. Except I kiss my dog now all the time and even when she's sleeping. Oh! the things that are clattering around in my head that I may never write about. It's not lying, exactly, but more like,  

selecting. What to leave in. What to leave out. Why write about a virus or a war or why I installed a deadbolt lock on my childhood bedroom door,

when it's tax season at the library, and Mrs. B has a list of dvds she wants me to search for, and it's a warm sunny day after weeks of cold and gray. I keep having flashbacks to the 1980's. The ever present possibility of global thermonuclear war. I'd forgotten that feeling of doom that maybe I'd never make it past my teenage years. But somehow, I did. We do, 

each one of us, what we have to do. In the meantime, a man needs help on the computer, and finally I've mastered the copier machine--how to email a scanned document and what a handy trick that is for our patrons. Look how much I read! 

a little girl squeals. She holds up her book to show me, her finger between the pages marking her place. 

Wow! I tell her. You've read all of that and you haven't even left the library yet!

I know! she says. And now I'm going with my little brothers to the park!

Wow! I say again, and I mean it. I want to go with her. But I have books to check in, books to check out. There will always be a virus, a war, a locked bedroom door. But today I watch a little girl clutching her book, skipping out of the library and into the warm, sunny park. 

 

Thursday

Another day, another mask-less patron at the library explaining to me why masks don't work. I'm sitting at the desk, nodding how I always do during one of these confrontations. The patron has just come out of the bathroom and has just washed his hands. I know this because when he comes up to the desk, shaking his wet hands, he announces:

"I just washed my hands." 

"Good to know," I say, nodding. 

"People used to make fun of me for being a germaphobe," he says. 

"You were ahead of the trend," I say, nodding. 

"Exactly." He smiles and touches his bare face with his freshly washed hands and launches into a rant on the worthlessness of masks. Something something microbe particles. Something something Dr. Fauci, and I keep nodding.

I glance over at my co-worker. She is nodding politely too, while at the same time doodling up a storm. She's a big time doodler. 

 

"I had covid." The patron says. "January 2020. It wasn't a big deal and now I'm completely fine." 

"Wow," I say, "you're so lucky." I'm sorta messing with the guy now and I'm not proud of it. It's the situation. How absurdist it is. Nearly two years into a global pandemic and here we are. The signs on the door to the library that say PLEASE WEAR A MASK. The maskless patrons parked out at the computers, one of them presently coughing up a lung. 

I'm going to catch this. It's a miracle I haven't already. This week alone three people I know have gotten sick. I send them soup. I should be a paid spokesperson for this soup company. Paging SPOONFUL OF COMFORT people: let me be your official influencer in Columbus Ohio. Meanwhile, I am second-guessing every one of my sniffles, every twinge of throat scratchiness, every sneeze. 

I take a home test. It's negative. But can I be... positive that it's negative? I read all the health articles in the news. They range from: We're All Going to Get This! to Try Not to Get This! I wonder if I should be more afraid. But the truth is I am long past being afraid. This is the world now. 

"Forget masks." The patron is still going on. "You want to know what the secret is?" He leans over my desk. 

I scoot my chair back and nod. 

"Nutricicles."

The laugh bursts out of me before I can stop it, and then I apologize. "Good to know," I tell him. He walks off, and I reflexively reach for my hand sanitizer. "What the hell is a nutricicle?" I whisper to my doodling co-worker. 

"No idea," she says. She's finished with her doodle. She holds up the picture, and we both laugh into our masks. 

                                        --artwork by Emma Root

Dispatches from the Pre Post-Pandemic

The other day I was sitting at the library's information desk with a co-worker and we were talking about: is This the End of the World. 

We had to keep breaking up our conversation to help patrons look for their reserve items and someone who needed to use the fax machine and didn't know how to use the fax machine. Also, the phone kept ringing and every other caller wanted to know if we had free Covid tests. We do, we would say when we answered the phone. But they're at our main library location. And hurry, because we keep running out. 

Maybe every generation thinks it's the end of the world, I was saying to my co-worker. He's twenty years younger than I am and just had his first child and he seemed very resigned to the state of the world and I was trying to make him feel better, but then I would have to stop so I could look up if we had a certain book and he would have to stop so he could help someone who lost their library card. 

But look at how things were in like, 1965, for example, I told him. We had political assassinations and the Vietnam War and battles over Civil Rights and--

a man came in who needed help signing onto a computer and somehow he got to talking about how he was a classically trained French chef but his goal in life was to recreate the perfect Coney dog sauce from his childhood and after twelve years of perfecting his recipe, he realized he had done it and now he wanted to open a Coney dog restaurant in town and could I please help him send an email. 

The phone rang. My co-worker had been in eighth grade on 9/11 and his teacher told the class that the school didn't want them to keep the TVs on in the classroom but he was going to because This Was History happening in real time and all of the students needed to watch it. 

And I understand, my co-worker said, because the teacher was right about history, but at the same time, we were in 8th grade and I still remember those people jumping off the buildings. 

Maybe that's when things went off the rails, I said. 9/11. I was thinking of that night and how I stood for a while in my kids' bedrooms, one after the other, my little boy and my little girl, both sleeping peacefully, their rooms dark, and how my heart still hadn't stopped racing since 9:15 am that morning and what world was this that I had brought them into. What world would they grow up in? 

Someone wanted a book recommendation for her grandchild and someone had just signed up for a new library card and someone wanted to pay a fine. But we don't have fines anymore, so please don't worry about it. 

And what about Kent State, I said to my co-worker. That was awful. I mean, can you imagine kids walking to class and getting shot at by National Guardsmen? So, don't you think every generation thinks they're living in the end of the world, but they're not, and then we just go on?

I can see your point, he said. But what about Climate Change?

Oh, well, yeah, Climate Change, I said. 

And then, there's the Pandemic, he said. He moved to take a sip of his water and lowered his mask and I suddenly remembered that he had a moustache. 

It hit me that I was wearing a mask too and neither one of us had seen each other's faces in a year and a half and even though I knew that I had not made him feel better and I was not feeling any better myself, I started laughing. Maybe I laughed too hard, to be honest.   

Then the phone rang. A harried mom came up to the desk and I checked her books out and gave each of her kids a sticker. I wish you could see how cute they were, those little kids, and how happy they were about their stickers. 

Mercury is in retrograde

and I don't know what that means but it seems bad. Something about the planet appearing to move backwards and maybe that affects relationships? or signing business contracts? This is according to astrologers, so make of it what you will, but how else do you explain

people losing their minds on airplanes, or yesterday when I was first in line at a green light and three cars shot through the red light, or that "doctor" testifying before the Ohio Statehouse saying it was a fact that people who had the Covid vaccine could stick a spoon on their face because now we're all magnetic and she knew this because she saw it on Youtube.

The other day our dog refused to go for a walk, which is so odd, because always, even if you whisper the word (walk) she will come running, but this day, she planted her feet and wouldn't budge. She hadn't been eating, and then she was panting and shivering. 

My husband and I brought her to the veterinary hospital and I was having ptsd, remembering the last time we came to this place with our dying cat, but how kind the people were. They took the freaked out dog from freaked out us and did blood tests and pumped her up with fluids. Nothing physically wrong that they could see. Has there been any recent trauma, they asked.

Well, our daughter and boyfriend moved out a few weeks ago and took their dog with them, but I never thought of our dogs as being friends. Still, who knows what goes on in a dog's head, and then my husband and I went out of town for a week and left her with a stranger, so there's that.

I went to work tired and a man strode into the library without a mask. Which is okay. We have a sign on the door that says Masks Appreciated, but more and more people are ignoring it. Which is okay too. But still, the man seemed to be gearing up for a fight. When will the computers be back, he demanded. When will you have seating? When can we have meetings? 

I was sitting behind plexiglass and I smiled under my mask. We're working on it, I said. 

It was the same thing I told the mom who asked when we'd have toys back in the youth department. I could read the impatience on her mask-less face. We just opened the library a few weeks ago, I said. We'll get there. What I didn't say: Maybe it takes a little time to come out of a global pandemic. 

But I get it.

The masks, the plexiglass, the empty toy room are all outward signs that we just went through something scary. Some of us are struggling with this more than others. IE: losing their minds on airplanes or running red lights or trying to stick metal spoons to their foreheads. 

When I was in California with my son, we were sitting at a red light and he told me his philosophy of red lights, how traffic signals are really the only experience most people have with laws, with the social contract. If we didn't have traffic lights, we'd all just drive straight through. But here we are, stopped, even when there's no traffic going the other way. Most of us follow the rules, 

wear the masks, get the vaccines. We're scared too but we want to do what is right, not just for ourselves, but for other people too. 

The vet sent the dog home with fancy wet canned food and the dog gulped it down and then crawled into bed with us. In the morning I asked her if she wanted to go for a walk and she came running. 

Some days are harder than others

Have I been here before?

My first indoor dining of 2021, after approximately one year and two months and two weeks, give or take a few days, was at the Hard Rock Cafe at the Houston International Airport, 

which wasn't exactly the sparkly First Indoor Dining Experience I had been envisioning, but it was either that, or fast food. They didn't have menus. How it works is you aim your phone at the QR code card on the table and the digital menu pops up. You can even order from your phone too, so no need to bother the mask-wearing server. I had a salad, and then it was back to masks on and a wait at the gate.

Some of my fear and anxiety, constant companions over the past year, two months, and two weeks, is slowly starting to fade away. But for a while there, it was getting dicey. The complex series of risk calculations before every excursion out of the house -- one mask? two masks? at work, at the grocery store... The reassessments after encounters-- wait, did I get exposed when I picked up the to-go order and that other customer waiting was coughing up a lung... is this tickle in my throat allergies or am I three to five days away from full-blown Covid and possibly killing my family--

It's hard to feel normal and what is normal anymore? On the plane home, the guy sitting in the row in front of my husband and me has a meltdown. All I can see is the back of his white-haired head, 

but he's bobbing it a lot, indignantly. He's paid for the seat beside him and he wants his suitcase to sit on it and he can't understand what the flight attendant is saying with her mask on and no, he won't pull up his own mask because he's drinking his beverage and he won't let the flight attendant seat anyone else next to him. One by one 

the flight attendants attempt to deal with him and I can feel my blood pressure rising. Within a few minutes, all of the flight attendants are standing in our row, hovering over the man, and standing with them is the passenger they've brought up to sit beside him, another white man, who's got a weary look on his face, like, come on buddy, give it up, you're not gonna win this one,

the white head stops bobbing. His shoulders sag. The other passenger takes his seat beside him. One of the flight attendants leans across and wags his finger in the man's face and says: "No more warnings about the mask, sir." Another wag of the finger. "Resistance is futile." 

Situation resolved. My husband and I laugh relieved laughs under our breaths. I type Resistance is futile in the note feature on my phone. I keep sneaking peeks at the man's white head. I can almost hear him thinking, When did the whole world change? A while ago, I want to tell him. You just haven't been paying attention. In San Francisco it was 65 degrees when we left in the morning to catch our flight. In Ohio it's a sticky 82 degrees when we walk to our car in the dark. My first day back to work is the next day, 

only a week gone for vacation, but over that week, everything is different. My library branch is open. No more walk-up window. People can just waltz right in. Masks appreciated, says the sign on the window, and nearly everyone wears them. It's a habit for most of us now. I'm fully vaccinated, I keep reminding myself. It's okay. It's going to be okay. 

But maybe after one year and two months and two weeks, give or take a few days, it's sometimes hard to believe it. Welcome back! I say to the patrons as they come through the door, 

the ones I knew before the pandemic and the ones I've gotten to know through the walk-up window. Welcome back! A little girl stops in front of the plexiglass that surrounds my desk and looks at me, frowning. Have I been here before? she says.  

I don't know, I tell her. 

Her mom shrugs. I don't think she remembers. 

Well, then, I tell the little girl brightly, Welcome to the library. 

Dog treats at the library check out window

The other day one of my co-workers brought in a box of dog biscuits. The library where I work is at the edge of a park, and sometimes people who are out walking their dogs will amble up to the window to see if they have any books on hold for them. She thought it would be nice if we could give out dog treats.

I have had the opportunity to offer this service to our patrons (well, their dogs) twice in the past few days and it has given me an absurd amount of joy. Maybe it's Month Eleven of the Global Pandemic starting to wear me down. 

The fact that the library is still closed to the public and instead of wearing one mask I am wearing two masks and it's too cold out to have socially distant bonfires and no sign of anyone in my family getting the vaccine any time soon, except for my mother. 

I am grateful for that! Also, I am grateful that I have a job, that the people I love have managed to make it this far, unscathed, and all I can do for the people I know who are suffering with this disease is send them soup. 

Side note about this soup: It is supposedly very good, especially the rolls. 

A friend who recently recovered from Covid went out to dinner alone, in celebration of her wellness and moment of immunity. She Facebook-Lived her experience. The near empty restaurant. The white tablecloths. A drink order. An appetizer. I watched it all in wonder and delight. The last time I went to a dinner like this was almost a year ago. A group of writers and an agent who'd spoken at our writers' group conference. 

I can't remember what I ordered. I really really wish I remembered this! But it was just another dinner to me at the time. This was a place downtown that I often went to, a special place to meet a friend or to impress an out of town visitor. I used to take things like this for granted. 

And who was the last person I hugged who is not my husband or daughter? Who was the last random person I chatted with bare-faced, those times I would bump into a neighbor at the grocery store or out shopping or at the movies. (For the record, I do remember the last movie I saw. 1917. Oh, those poor people who thought their lives were bad living in the time of world war and not knowing yet that a global pandemic was just around the corner. 

Sad update: The movie theater we always went to is closed now. For good.) 

But these dogs at the window! Their owners are bundled up for the weather and sometimes while they wait for me to check out their owner's books, (bundled up myself) bagging everything up because it's sleeting or snowing out there, they'll peer inside, tongues lolling,

and I am so ridiculously glad that I have something to give them. 

Top ten things I'm thankful for

1. the drumstick-less/one-winged turkey, ordered from the farmer's market and arriving from the processor looking like a frankenstein-gaping-holes-in-the-sides horror show, but which turned out to be surprisingly tasty and gave my friends and family on social media a laugh on Thanksgiving morning. 

2. lights on my neighbors' houses

3. marigold seeds

4. this dumb game that my daughter loves and I don't really like it but I play it with her anyway and now I sort of like playing it after all.

5. digital puzzles on my library's website  because they are addictive and meditative and there are no pieces to turn over or drop off the table.

6. everybody has matching Christmas sloth pajamas

7. s'mores around the fire pit

8. My best friend has a best seller! 

9. My doggie

10. my job at the library where I get to have fun conversations about books with people through a window, six feet apart and through masks, except for this one day when an elderly lady wandered up, maskless, looking confused and asked me if she could ask me a question. 

Of course, I said, staring uncomfortably at her bare face.

Because sometimes I don't always know what's going on, she said, And I want to. I want to pay more attention, I want to know what things are and be more in the present moment, you know what I mean?

(Well, we're in the middle of a global pandemic and you're supposed to be wearing a mask), I didn't say, nodding. What's your question?

What kind of tree is this behind me?

I told her I didn't know and I gave her one of the Identification of Trees in the Park handouts we have and she wandered off, curiously and at the same time cluelessly, and it hit me that this is me, this is all of us, and I just hope she makes it through unscathed, 

that I do,

and that you do, too.  

Back to work

What's the same:  

The quiet in the library, the books, the beep of the check-in sensor, but not the check-out, not yet. That is part of what is different. We have no patrons now. And likely won't have them for a while-- not until the virus numbers in our community come down.

Also, different: the masks, the daily temperature checks, the sanitizing wipes station. 

Five months ago I walked out of this place thinking I'd be back in a few weeks. First day, and it takes me a minute to orient myself again, remember my log-in, but then I quickly fall into my old groove, shelving, checking in, the feel of the books in my hands, the shush of pages. Fun fact: these books have been quarantined for 96 hours, stacked in our (un-used-for-the-foreseeable-future) public meeting rooms. 

Down in the youth department, alphabetizing the videos, if I can forget for a moment I'm masked and the toys have been put in storage and there won't be any kids spilling out of the story-time room, 

life almost feels 

normal. 

This is hard, and you're not even doing the hard part

Watching a loved one die via your phone. Working in a hospital. Cashiering all day behind a screen guard at Kroger. Losing your job. Trapped at home with an abusive parent.

No. You're eating too much ice cream and not dyeing your hair. Your husband's grown a beard and looks like a stranger. Still, you have moments of panic that take your breath away. Last night you dreamed that a woman dared you to catch a baby she was about to throw, and then she threw it before you could react. It's a corona dream, your friend tells you,

it's a thing now. 

Bamboo has taken over the backyard of your new-old house, and every afternoon, you dig and pull. The roots stretch and crisscross. When you yank them up, the weedy grass peels up in sheets. It's a decent workout. Okay, you lied before when you said you didn't lose your job.

You weren't surprised when you got the email, but still, it felt like a punch in the gut. Pulling bamboo is a multiple step process.

1. You find where a shoot is coming up and position your shovel under it.
2. Jump hard on the shovel.
3. Lift. (It helps if you position a rock under the shovel for leverage and you've got plenty of those!)
4. Here's where you'll also lift up the root.
5. Pull the root until it breaks off somewhere ten feet away from you. 
6. Find another shoot. Repeat.

Why do people plant bamboo? How long will the library stay closed? How many bamboo roots are there in this yard? What about that elderly woman on the last day the library was open, the regular patron who came in every few days to check out one book and who usually chatted with you, who saw the chaos of the library, the people clearing the shelves of videos and carting baskets of books to the checkout counter, the woman, who when it was her turn, came up with her one book and asked, softly,

What's going on here?

We're closing for a few weeks, you told her, just a precaution, because of the virus, and then in your brightest customer service voice: Why don't you check out a few more books, just in case?

She didn't.

The bamboo runs under the fence into the neighbors' yards. You have no idea how you will stop it. 

Mid February and birds sing in the trees

I walk my dog in a loop around my neighborhood, pass the flowers coming up, the houses still decorated with Christmas tree lights. One day it is fifty degrees. The next it’s twenty. The news switches back and forth between viruses and criminals.

I decide to stop reading it again.

Instead, I listen to podcasts. How Facebook spreads disinformation. Why it's okay to be addicted to caffeine. An interview with a teacher eager to take part in the Iowa caucus so she can show her students democracy in action. Now, a few weeks after that caucus fell apart, I can still hear her excited voice.

I read gardening books. I have dinner with friends. I paint the trim in my bedroom. I write the break-up scene in my rom com and wallow for a while in my characters' misery. It's okay, I want to tell them. You're going to get back together soon.

The other day a regular patron came into my library and offered the staff slices of caramel-drizzled chocolate cake. In the afternoon we had our monthly Reading with Rover program and the dogs (darling, kid-friendly, trained-as-emotional-support dogs) trotted down to the story room, pausing to let patrons pet them along the way.

It occurs to me that over the past several years I have lost faith in every institution. Government, the Church, the Media, the Law, the Police, Education, the Military. Okay, I take that back. I do still have faith in a few.

Science, Medicine and Libraries.

I can't speak for the scientists and doctors, but let me tell you some of what I did at work today:

--recommended a graphic novel for a reluctant teen reader
--helped a young couple operate the scanner so they could scan documents to apply for citizenship
--showed a man how to use his phone to download audio books
--signed up a child for her first library card
--looked up the phone number for a hospital for a patron who didn't know how to use a computer.

Oh, and here is something wonderful: Ohio is starting an Imagination Library! It's modeled after Dolly Parton's program in Tennessee, where every child from birth to five years receives a free book each month. Our library is helping get the word out, so see here to sign your child up:.

In other news, our system now offers video games for checkout and vinyl records. We're teaming up with other libraries in Central Ohio to bring Margaret Atwood to speak in the fall. We will happily print off any tax form you need.

Also, we will not turn down free chocolate cake.

Please let me pay my fine

The library where I work has gone fine-free.

This is a not-new idea (but new to our little community) that libraries should be about making patrons feel welcome and wanting to check out materials without worrying about being penalized for returning items a few days late. There's been research that shows that some people stop going to the library when they owe a fine, and of course, this hits poorer patrons hardest.

Also, our library didn't really make that much money on fines anyway, and it took a lot of employee time to keep up with them, time that could be better spent on programming and community outreach.

We've been explaining the new policy for the past few weeks, and some people are having a more difficult time with it than others.

Example:

Man (eyeing the new DVD display): So, am I really not going to get fined if I don't return a movie on time?

Me: That's right. We're fine free.

Man (smirking): I used to bring these back on time because there was a fine. Now, why should I?

Me: Well, if you don't return the item at all, you'll get charged for it.

Man: Ha! I knew it! You're going to fine me!

Me: No. As soon as you bring the item back, we'll remove the charge from your account.

Man (shaking his head): And you think this is going to work?

Me: Most patrons bring items back regardless of the fine. They get it that if they want to see a movie or check out a book, they have to return it so other people can have a chance too.

Man (taking a movie and still smirking at me): Ooookay.

Example Two:

Woman: I have a fine on my account. I know you're fine free now, but this is an old fine and I want to pay it.

Me (looking up her account and assuming there's some massive fine): Hmm. It looks like you owe 20 cents.

Woman (fumbling around in her purse): That's right. Here's my money.

Me: You don't really have to pay that. It'll just sit on your account and won't keep you from checking materials out.

Woman (looking distressed and thrusting two dimes at me): I don't like owing money. Please let me pay what I owe.

Me: Ooookay.

So this is how it's been going for the last few weeks with people seeming to fall into two camps. The ones who are immediately thinking about how they can game the system and the ones who are freaked out about owing ten cents from ten years ago.

Maybe the smirky guy's right and the whole library system will collapse if we don't punish people.

But then, this happened:

A woman came in to use a computer. For the record, anyone can walk into a public library and use the computers, print something, copy or fax something. There's a small charge for copies but otherwise computer use is free. It's one of the most-used services at the library.

I asked the woman if she had a library card and she hesitated and then said no. I gave her a guest pass and off she went, but later, she came back to the desk.

Not quite looking at me, she whispered, I think I do have a library card, but I owe some fines and I haven't used my card in a while.

Well, let's look, I said. I entered her information into the computer and nothing came up. Nope, I told her. You're not in our system anymore. Sometimes the library will purge accounts that aren't used for a while. So you're good. No fines.

She didn't say anything. She still wasn't looking at me.

Do you want to get a new library card today?  I asked.

I can get a card today? she said.

Sure!

I walked her through the application and in three minutes I handed her a card. I did my spiel about how many items she could borrow and all of the programs we offered and gave her our little brochure, which still shows the list of fines.

Ignore all that, I said. We're printing up a new brochure soon. We're fine free now.

She looked at me and I realized she was crying. I pretended I didn't notice.

Welcome to the library, I said.

Top Ten Reasons I Love Working at the Library

10. Books! -- to shelve and take off shelves, to check in and check out, to organize and arrange, never mind sneaking a peek at the front flap or scanning the back, and all of those chats with patrons, did you like this one? What's your favorite by this author? Ooh! I have been meaning to read this, do you recommend it?

9. We also have dvds and cds and magazines and newspapers, and then there's the array of digital resources. Did you know that with your library card, from the comfort of your own home, you can stream a movie, flip through a magazine, download a song or a book?

Yeah, me neither, until I started working at the library. (For reference purposes, see: Kanopy, Flipster, Hoopla, and Libby.)

8. But wait, how much does a library card cost? (This is an actual question I got the other day when I was working at the desk.)

The answer: It's free!

7. And speaking of library cards, this is one of my favorite things to do at the library. Give someone a library card. To the woman above who had apparently never been inside a library in her life. To the man from Brazil who had just moved here and proudly showed me his passport and utility bill with his address. To the four year old who wanted to check out her own books. To the two boys who were helping their non-English-speaking mom apply for her own card. I love that moment when I hand them their new card and the little brochure that goes with it and say, Welcome to the library!

6. This cool packing-up of books we have to do. (The library where I work is part of a consortium with a bunch of other libraries and all of the libraries work together to ship books out to each other, so every day we are fitting and stacking and organizing bins in this way that I totally get a charge out of.) I think because it reminds me of playing Tetris.

5. Questions. These are like puzzles and even the patrons asking the questions sometimes know that it might be hard to find the answer. For example: What's that book that was mentioned on NPR a few weeks ago or a few months ago and had something to do with a dog and a hurricane?

Or

Did I read this book? (Fun fact: we can't actually answer that question because there's no way to see a patron's book-checking-out history. Which is a good thing, actually, because, the Bill of Rights.

4. Book Recs. I LOVE THESE! Usually it's a parent looking for a read-alike to a child's favorite book or a person waiting on a sequel and needing something else to read in the meantime. Sometimes it's just a lonely person who you can tell just

3. wants to talk, and guess what? They have come to the right person at the right place for that!

2. Because we are Open to All. See:

Those are the words etched in stone over the entrance to the main library downtown since 1907.

1. That day I was working in the Youth Services section and noticed the quiet little girl sitting by herself while her father was on his phone and I asked her if she wanted to do our famous Very Hungry Caterpillar Scavenger Hunt and she nodded, and I gave her the clipboard and she marched off quietly searching, and then I forgot about her for a while, and then she came back after finding all of the hidden items and had an extremely difficult time choosing a prize from our prize box, needing to touch every single item at least twice before making her final decision,

and that was only after I told her that if she came back another time, she could do the scavenger hunt again and pick out another prize.

A few days later when I was working upstairs, the same little girl marched over to the desk and held up her prize and spoke to me for the first time, smiling when she said:

"I came back."

How to Write a Natalie D. Richards Book (part two)

The book is called What You Hide, but for me it will always be called The Library Book. Because it takes place in a library; specifically, the library where Natalie works as an executive assistant, but SHHHHH, don't tell anyone. Let's pretend it's any small-town library.

But the library is only one piece of this puzzle.

There's a thing that the author Sid Fleischman said-- that just as it takes two sticks to build a fire, it takes two ideas to spark a story. The other idea for Natalie was a poor girl who runs away from home and starts hanging out at her town's library. 

Add a rich boy who's sentenced to community service at the same library. 

And because this is a Natalie D. Richards' book, there's going to be a creepy, thriller twist:

There's someone (something?) else hiding out in that library... 

Side note: Let me tell you it is a fascinating thing to watch a person create a book in real time-- 

from the brainstorming ideas part (ooh, what if the girl hides in the restroom when the library closes? What if the boy finds a dead body in the stacks?) 

to the first-draft/narrative-crafting part (okay, I'm thinking that the boy has a secret he's hiding too, but I can't figure out what it is yet...)

to the revision/plot-hole-filling stage (ugh! the timeline's totally off! How am I going to get everyone back inside the library for the climax??!!)

to the cover reveal:

A lot of this is worked through during daily phone calls (did I mention that Natalie and I are critique partners?) and she calls me every morning on her way to work at the library so we can discuss things like 

character motivation 

and homelessness 

and upper middle class towns 

and the opioid epidemic 

and privileged teenagers 

and spousal abuse 

and libraries as sanctuaries 

and psychopaths 

and techniques for climbing the outside of a building. 

And now after more than a year, the book is out and on the bookstore shelves and IN THE LIBRARY!

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Want to know more about the lovely Natalie D. Richards and her books?

Website: nataliedrichards.com

Follow her on Facebook Author Natalie D. Richards

On Twitter: @NatdRichards 

On Instagram (where she shares fun pics of her enormous dogs)
Books:
Barnes & Noble
Amazon
Cover to Cover-- For signed copies (and to support an awesome local bookstore)

It's quiet in the stacks

At least it is first thing in the morning. I'm here an hour before the library opens, searching for books that have been requested by customers. Every day at my branch there are several hundred of these, and the goal is to pull them all before noon.

Only a few weeks working at this library and I already have a pattern-- where I park the cart and how I stack the books so I can pull as many as I can in one load. I know the more popular, requested books by sight. The cookbooks and books on knitting, the testing prep books for the ACT or GRE, the latest bestsellers.

But every day there are a couple of oddball books that end up on my cart.

Like this one:

The title-- Your House Is on Fire, Your Children All Gone-- sealed the deal and I pulled a second copy and creeped myself out over the next few days reading it on break. (side note: it's a kind of horror fairy tale about a group of kids growing up in a weird village somewhere in Germany. The story was unsettling, to say the least.)

Also, unsettling, was this one:

The View from Flyover Country: Dispatches from the Forgotten America is not fiction but a collection of thought-provoking and disturbing essays written by Sarah Kendzior, an expert on authoritarianism who lives in St. Louis. Each essay, which Kendzior wrote over the past several years and leading up to the 2016 election, centers around topics such as poverty and class and race.  

I have been thinking about some of these issues after my library training, which turns out, covered more than simply how to pull requested books and how to shelve them after they're returned. For example, I learned about how public libraries are pretty much the only places in our country open and welcoming to everyone.

Sometimes that means people checking out cookbooks and books on knitting and sometimes that means young children hanging out without a parent and sometimes that means a homeless person coming inside from the cold and sitting in a comfy chair to read the newspaper. 

It's not often that all of us are in the same room together.  

I pull books on baking Christmas cookies and how to start a new business and how to take care of your autistic child. Books of poems and books on dinosaurs and yoga and computer languages. I ponder baking bread and learning Japanese and worry about climate change. I stop to help a man log on to the library internet. I lead a woman to the books on grammar. I recommend a picture book on unicorns. 

I shelve books and pull books and organize books. I pass the teen section where I see my own book and think about how it is just another book, waiting for someone to check it out and return it so I can shelve it again.