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. 

This is the earliest we have ever put up our tree

We always get a freshly cut one and I don't like the needles falling off and ending up all over the floor. Plus, there's a rule I have of One Holiday at a Time. For example, I can't stand hearing Christmas music while I am shopping for my turkey and cranberries.

I can take this idea to the extreme. Last year, we didn't put the tree up until the weekend before Christmas. The needles fell of the branches and ended up on the floor anyway. Because none of the trees are freshly cut, my husband says. They probably cut them months ago, so who cares if we buy the thing in November.

He's right, I know. But it was weird last night tromping around the Christmas tree lot. It's been rainy lately. Warm. The ground was muddy. The place where we always go is run by a Boy Scout troop and the little boys helping us were wearing mud-spattered boots. Usually we spend more time choosing. Circling trees to examine them from every angle. Last night, our daughter, home from college for a few days, pointed at one, and we called it a night.

She teased me about not having any Christmas spirit. It's November, I tell her. Our fridge is full of Thanksgiving leftovers. We still need to rake the yard.

Mom, she says, rolling her eyes.

We haul the tubs of decorations up from the basement. Is it just me or was it only a few weeks ago I was packing up these tubs, putting them away? Where did the time go?

My grouchiness gives way to nostalgia. Picking out the tree with one child in our arms. And then with two. The years we drove out to a tree farm and cut our own tree. The homemade decorations, beaded gluey things and dried macaroni. The family pictures taken in front of the tree with someone inevitably breaking down and/or having a silly fit. The obligatory annual watching of It's a Wonderful Life.

But I don't want to spiral down that nostalgia tunnel. For one more day we've got our daughter home. It's sunny outside and the leaves need raking, but we'll worry about them next weekend.

Today, we're eating Thanksgiving leftovers and decorating the tree.

We may never leave this building again (now that we have discovered Uber Eats)

Why didn't someone ever tell me about this?

Okay, my daughter told me about this. This, meaning Uber Eats. It's like ordering a pizza, except it's food from potentially every restaurant in the area. My college age daughter and her friends are huge fans. They say things like, Gotta Go, Mom, Uber Eats is here with my Panera broccoli cheese soup in a bread bowl.

I confess that I would roll my eyes. In my day we picked up food ourselves. In our cars. It was called Take-out, young lady. 

But now, consider me a convert. I am on a weekend writing retreat with my friend Natalie. We have gone on retreats before, productive and rejuvenating and sometimes haunted, but for this retreat we have changed things up. Instead of traveling off to a remote cabin in the woods or to a creepy air bnb in a quaint tourist town, we've settled on a high rise apartment in our own city. Fifteen minutes away from our homes, but it may as well be a million miles.

We have goals.

Natalie has signed up to do NaNoWriMo and she wants to write 10,000 words on a middle grade novel. I want to finish the damn scene that I've been treading water through for a week and break into the next scene.

I know. Natalie's goal is a bit loftier than mine.

But first, we order Uber Eats. A pizza-- I guess we could've just ordered out for a pizza? The difference here is they show you who is driving the food toward you and where his little car is on google maps and no money actually changes hands. It's all done ahead of time and it is so easy that we are already planning our next meal.

Tacos and chips and guac.

Which we eat as Natalie hammers out 5000 words and I write a page that finishes up my scene! Then we stay up late reading each other what we wrote and brainstorming next scenes and snarfing down the rest of the chips and guac.

Morning, I realize that I have no idea how to start my next scene and Natalie is gearing up to write 5000 more words and we're both jonesing for coffee.

Too bad they don't have Uber coffee, Natalie says, and lightbulbs spark in our heads and we both hop up excitedly to look at our phones. Within twenty minutes we are drinking our coffee and eating full blown breakfasts of potato hash and toast and eggs made to order.

Natalie pounds out her 5000 words. I write my way into the next scene.

Thanks, Uber Eats!

Most people aren't home

or they're pretending they aren't. My husband holds the map and charts our course, while I knock on doors. That's the deal we struck, although one of the days we go out canvassing together, when it looks like it's going to rain, he darts across the street and hits the odd numbered houses on the list while I do the even.

I can hear him knocking, talking enthusiastically about how much he loves the candidate we're canvassing for, how he's met her five times. I laugh when we're back in the car, safe out of the downpour. What was that all about, I say. You've never met that candidate.

My husband shrugs. I got caught up in the moment, he says.

Here's the thing about canvassing, at least how it's done in our part of Ohio: you're not knocking on every door. You're not knocking on most doors. You're only knocking on the doors of likely supporters. The point is to energize these people to go out and vote.

But I wonder about the houses we skip. Not the obvious ones with Republican candidate signs in the yards. But the others. Houses with bikes thrown on the lawn. Carved pumpkins on the stoop. Leaf piles. Maybe they're not registered in either party. Maybe they keep their views private, their right, of course. Or maybe they don't vote.

I knock on a door and the man inside scolds me. I'm tired of you people coming here all day, he says. You're going to wake my baby.

Flustered, I tell him I'm sorry.

But my husband, down at the curb, is furious. You should have asked him why he has a front door, he said. You should have asked him if he's okay with his baby sleeping in a cage at the border.

Ah well, I say. I check the box for non-supporter. I cross the house address off the list.

Something I remember from history class is that in the lead-up to the Revolutionary War only 40% of the colonists supported fighting the British. Twenty percent supported the British, the presumed MABA crowd (Make America British Again).

Everyone else was neutral.

I mean, I get it. We're all busy. Going to work. Taking care of the kids. Making meals. But how do you not have an opinion one way or another? How do you not take a stand?

And I wonder, Did the neutral ones stay neutral throughout the war, or was there a line for them, a moment when a light bulb went off and they thought, Hmm. Okay, that's it. Now I care.

At the house where we meet for canvassing duty, volunteers are bustling around. Checking in address packets. Signing out the next shift of volunteers. Leading a brief training for the newbies. Someone's in the kitchen setting out sandwiches and a bowl of candy.

It reminds me of my PTA days, the same core group of volunteers, the people behind the scenes making sure that the teachers had the supplies they needed and that all the fun programs went on without a hitch.

Day three, canvassing, I go out with a friend.

A woman out raking her leaves says, Oh good! I need one of these sample ballots to take in with me when I vote. A man says, I'm a Republican, and when I start to turn away, he laughs and says, I'm joking!

But most of the people are not home or are pretending not to be. We hang a sample ballot on the doorknob. Head to the next house on the list.

The moment I walk in I am calmer

It's the smell, I think. Books, specifically, library books, all smell the same to me. Something familiar and comforting. Paper and dust motes. My ten-year-old self with the bed covers thrown over my head.

Escape.

As a kid I liked to wander the aisles, trace my fingers along the book spines. I still like to do this. I don't know why it's taken me so long to work in this place. 

And how fitting to be the person who gets to shelve the books. I start each day with a cart, everything quickly and perfectly organized by the alpha numeric label. 

There's a whole system going on behind the scenes that I never thought about. All of those books being checked out and checked back in. All of the carts that need to be shelved, and shelved, and shelved. Am I too fast and maybe making a mistake? Am I too slow, struggling to see those teeny tiny numbers? 

Those labels are what I'm focusing on when I shelve, but still, I can't help glancing at a cover here and there, thumbing through pages. A book of essays I heard about on NPR. A true crime story. That novel I've been meaning to read. And other books that snag my interest as I fit them into their proper place on the shelf. 

Books on photography and printmaking. Biographies of obscure people. Holiday decorating. I want to check out all of them. And I can. 

Different from when I was a child and restricted by what I could carry in my arms for a mile. My mom and little brothers and I walked to the library back then. Actually, it was only that one year when we didn't have a car. The walk took forever. A hilly trek through a park. A rounding of the corner. And then, the wall along the front of the library. My brothers and I would climb on it, pretend we were walking at the edge of a high building, arms out. 

A few months ago I went back with one of them. We stopped in the park and walked from there. It was a gray chilly day. The town where we'd grown up was exactly the same and totally different from when we were kids. 

We came upon the wall and I said, do you remember--

at the same time my brother hopped up onto it, walked the edge, arms out. He read as much as I did when we were little. Now he reads ten times more. 

Although, now that I am working at a library, maybe I will catch up. 

I was locked in a weird battle once

It happened a long time ago when I was living in another city.

I had never interacted with anyone like this woman before, someone so lovely and intelligent and charming that most of us who came in contact with her immediately loved her. But at the same time, there were other people who came to an entirely different conclusion. She was a liar. Manipulative. Pitting people against each other. Actively working in her own self-interest.

But I didn't believe any of that. I was one of the woman's biggest cheerleaders,

until one day, she threw me under the bus. She made up a story about me and informed our boss, who reprimanded me. I was stunned, but able to defend myself (the story wasn't true and not really hard, ultimately, to prove) and the woman was able to wriggle out of getting into trouble herself, telling the guy she'd made a mistake and then turned on someone else, and everyone moved on

but I couldn't.

I was consumed with outrage, suddenly able to see the woman for who she was, as if a veil had been lifted and every rumor I'd heard was so glaringly and obviously true. And yet, there were still so many other people who loved her and sang her praises.

When I tried to tell them what she'd done to me, I could see the skeptical look in their eyes, their discomfort at hearing my story, which even to me, sounded sort of shrill and defensive.

I kept pushing though-- I was RIGHT and she was WRONG and all of this was unfair and she shouldn't be allowed to wreak all of this havoc and then

she got me again.

I can't even remember the details now, but at the time, this new fresh outrage sent me over the edge. I ranted and raved to another coworker, pleading my case, wanting her to SEE what this woman had done, readying myself to prepare, anew, for battle-- I'd go to other coworkers, the boss-- and then pausing, finally, to hear my coworker's advice.

It was not what I expected.

She believed me. She'd had her own crazy encounters with the woman. But she didn't think I should do anything at all. And as I sputtered out Whys and Buts and NO! she nodded and calmly said,

You're never going to beat her because she doesn't follow the rules. If you keep fighting, she's going to drag you down to her level. This is a game to her, but you don't have to play.

Long story short, I took the advice. It helped that we moved out of state shortly after, but in the meantime, there was a surprising freedom and peace in stepping out of the fray. (And oh yes, there was fray. Even now, a decade later, I will occasionally get a tearful, outraged call from a stranger, someone who is locked in their own battle with this woman and who wants to share their story.)

It's bizarre to me even now how a person like this can keep going like some energizer bunny/tasmanian devil, leaving behind so much damage in her path. Much much later I read the book The Sociopath Next Door and the final pieces of the puzzle clicked into place, but the lesson I've learned from the experience is not that people like this exist (lord knows most Americans have been fully aware of that since 2016)

but that we have a choice in how we react.

When you find yourself on the path with a person like this tearing toward you, please believe me when I tell you,

it is okay to step aside.

On sleeping for a year and waking up in a storm

We're probably meant to feel horrified. A girl, who seemingly has everything, decides to escape from the world by sleeping for a year.

But I have to admit that I was strangely drawn to the main character's quest in Ottessa Moshfegh's My Year of Rest and Relaxation. It's the biting language of the book, the dark humor, the thoroughly unlikeable, and yet, somehow sympathetic narrator, and the blurb on the flap that promises one of "the worst psychiatrists in the annals of literature." 

I read the book in one day, curled on my own couch, laughing at times at the absurdity of the situation (can you really go to sleep for a year?) and wondering too, how to sign myself up, because really, who doesn't want to occasionally throw on Netflix and binge-watch a season of something while drifting in and out of reality? 

In the case of our narrator it's not Netflix, but a trusty VCR and an unending supply of movies to binge-watch. The year is 2000. She's just out of college, living in New York City, working at a pretentious job, basically playing the role of a bored snotty beautiful receptionist at a surreally weird art gallery. Her on again/off again boyfriend is an asshole but she keeps going back for more. Her best friend is an easy person to push around, over-the-top desperate and pathetic, but probably the only person in our narrator's life who genuinely cares about her since both of her parents died.

Oh, and there's that awful psychiatrist, eager to prescribe any and all medications to ensure this girl gets her sleep. 

I won't tell you the rest, but please, someone else read this so we can talk about it!

Warning about the next book:

There's a dog in it, that dies. I knew this going in, which is why the book sat on my bedside table for two years. I have a thing about dogs in books, specifically, dogs dying. The book in question won the National Book Award though, and I typically like to read those. The author Jesmyn Ward won a second National Book Award last year, so I couldn't deny the pull of the book any longer. 

An hour after closing Moshfegh's book, I jumped into Ward's. It's called Salvage the Bones, and oh my God. The writing. This is, I don't know what to call it exactly, Faulknerian? Luscious metaphorical language and description, a story and characters that grab you on the first page. 

It's twelve days before Hurricane Katrina hits and our main character is an African American girl, fifteen, newly pregnant, poor, living in the deep backwoods of Mississippi with her alcoholic father, her brothers, one of whom raises pitbulls to fight. The dog, Jesus God the beautiful dog, and these kids- the intense loyalty they have for each other, their determination to grow up, to survive, and all the while, 

there's this storm coming. 

After I read the book, practically shaking at the end when I knew what was going to happen but praying I was wrong, when I closed the book, wondering how I could feel not despair but somehow hope, and how in the world did Jesmyn Ward DO THIS? I looked up everything I could about her, 

listened to an interview she did after she won her second National Book Award for Sing, Unburied, Sing, which I can assure you will not sit unread for long on my bedside table. She's made me question everything I thought I knew about our country, taking me by the hand gently and then slapping me upside the head,

waking me up from my privileged binge-watching reality into a world I didn't know existed but know now has always been here.

READ. IT.