Haunting the Library

If my mother were alive, today would be her 90th birthday. She and my father taught me and my siblings to love books. It worked: I'm a writer, like Mother was. One of my sisters is a librarian. My brother is a book seller. My one sister who isn't in the book business has a Ph.D, like my dad did. We all seem to be partial to book learnin'.

I went to the library yesterday to research a new book. It was about 100 degrees out. On hot days people come in, find a book and a comfy chair and snooze in the air conditioning. Added to that, "the collection is being rearranged," or words to that effect, adding to the busy feeling at the library. I don't know if the new fourth floor teen center (pictured here in its larval phase) is a cause or an effect of the rearrangement. I found a quiet bench on the fourth floor near the construction area and read for a while.

After I checked out my books I stopped at the Friends of the Library book store to see if I could snag a bargain. A woman there was buying almost all of the children's books. She reminded me of someone who would be very old today if she were still here. But she'd have no trouble finding her way around a busy library.