My library love affair began quite young. As a 5th or 6th grader, I remember walking to the nearest library after school in Horseheads, NY, from where my mother would pick me up. I remember wandering the aisles of bookshelves, wrapped in that strangely sweet mixture of awe and warm comfort that fills me even today as an adult when I browse the bookshelves of my local library.
There in those familiar shelves that are so firmly ingrained in my mind's eye, I met such fictional heroines as Caddie Woodlawn, Polly Pepper, Jo March, and Sarah Crewe and non-fictional heroines like Harriet Tubman, Clara Barton, Florence Nightingale, and Laura Ingalls -- each of whom played an indelible role in the shaping of my life and character. I imagined myself rising above imaginary insurmountable circumstances and bravely leading my siblings and friends to a better life through the varying situations and plots presented in the books that became my friends, my escape, my mentors.
In my early teen years, I found solace and outlet through organizing and running our small school library. In that little basement room, I shed tears, shared confidences, and found escape from the occasional monotony of the school day. The library was my refuge and solace in the years of teen angst -- but yet didn't leave me wallowing in my emotions, but called me to higher thoughts through the introduction of true godly heroines like Joni Eareckson, Jim and Elisabeth Elliott, Isobel Kuhn, Dorie the Girl Nobody Loved, Mary Slessor, and Amy Carmichael. Many a summer day, I would walk from our parsonage home and slip into the coolness of the church/school basement to find relief from the heat and from boredom in the intriguing worlds of Nancy Drew and of the Bobbsey twins.
Once I got my driver's license after my family moved to another small town, my new favorite library hangout became the town's local library quaintly situated in an old, historic home. I read and reread the novels on the shelves, perused and wandered the cramped but comforting aisles of non-fiction biographies. In that little library, I first read Memoirs of a Geisha and the Princess Sultana series by Jean Sasson revealing the true stories of oppressed women in various corners of the globe. I also fell in love with Grisham's legal thrillers, devouring the volumes owned by that small town library.
College libraries drew me as well. Even though my time for pleasure reading was greatly diminished, I would still find time on a quiet afternoon to run my fingers over the titles of the less-frequented fiction section of our college library. There I renewed acquaintance with Francine Rivers' works, reveling in her artistry in Redeeming Love, Pretense, and The Atonement Child.
Even while overseas in China, I frequented the tiny library consisting of a few shelves in a small supply room on the university campus provided for us American English teachers by our sending organization. The scarceness of English reading materials forced me out of my normal genre comfort zone and into the ascetic writings of Richard Foster in his work The Celebration of Discipline. My spiritual horizons expanded, and I knew a greater depth in my communion with the Lord as a result of some of the tomes harvested from those dusty, neglected shelves.
Resettling back in upstate NY during my adult years and early married years, I became a frequenter of the small local library in Johnson City, preferring it over the larger more modern library facility in Binghamton proper just down the road. The homey nooks and crannies of the big, old, repurposed house suited me better, appealing to my sense of history and romance more than the florescent lighting and wide open spaces of its sterile, up-to-date counterpart downtown. Those shelves introduced me to Ken Follett's Pillar of the Earth series as well as biographies of adult survivors of abuse, giving me a sense of compassion and understanding for lives very different from my own safe and sheltered upbringing.
As a young mother, the library has wooed me and won me yet again with the previously unexplored territory of the children's book section, with free preschool programs that my daughter relishes. At least once, usually twice a week, she and I are at the library. I carefully search for old, barely-remembered favorites and children's classics and browse for yet-to-be-discovered delights while she works puzzles at the child-sized tables or plays in the play area.
So if my husband is looking for me,
if anyone is wondering where I might be on a rare free afternoon,
try the library.
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