Old & Familiar

I keep resurrecting my old habit of going to the library. Whether it's out of my own guilt of having little money to spend on small things like a paperback or my eco-concious worry of how many trees Barnes & Noble publishers have shredded I always come back to the same place. The library.

I don't know why people have forgotten the simplicity of checking out a book. Or having a hard to find, sought after series arrive in your name and sit, waiting on a shelf for you. It's like libraries should almost be put on the endangered species list. Not enough people remember what they used to do there. Technology has absolutely killed our desire to feel tattered pages between our thumb and finger.

I like to think I've become a familiar face at the library again. I'm learning where all the sections are. Where the new books arrive, how fast things are re-shelved. Each library has it's own ebb and flow. Though my local branch is small it's mighty and I can pull books from all over the State and even if no one in the wide network has the one obscure thing I'm looking for they can put it on a suggested buying list.
That's cool.

The library is like it's own little ecosystem of recycled treasure. I went back thru the young children's section the other day and decided on a whim to check out On the Banks of Plum Creek by Laura Ingels Wilder and Bunnicula. I felt a strange familiarity reading them again. It took me back to when I used to read on my hour long bus ride to and from school every day. Devouring book after book. I decided to do a bit of exploration to see if I could find books I'd read all those years ago. I found the Redwall series. Hello God, Are you there? It's me Margret. SuperFudge. Number the Stars. Sing Down the Moon. Old R.L. Stein Books. Indian In The Cupboard, Where the Red Fern Grows, Hatchet, Maniac McGee, Roald Dahl books.......
It was like a very strange rediscovery seeing the book covers again. I can't believe I used to read so much. I'd read nearly anything I could when I was younger.

Now my workdays and Etsy seem to take up all the spare time I ever have. It's no excuse so I have to resort back to reading before bedtime and during lunch. Counting on those old pages to take me out of my daily stress.

Those books that seem so old now still hold a place on shelves and wait idly for the right kid to walk past. I'll never know how I happened on them to begin with, but it made me feel happy just seeing them again.
Like for one tiny bit the world was just a-okay.