Reading as addiction, continued

it's been years since the beginning of this post.... and I don't remember the intended direction - if, indeed, there was one.  It was in my grade 3 year, i think, that my father bought his first home (he was a divorced single parent at the time). Just 4 doors down from this modest version of the dream home, as it turned out, lived my nemesis. Imagine living just a couple hundred feet down the street from someone who terrified (and terrorized) you. Fortunately, the evil woman kept pretty much to herself. She was huge, morbidly obese, and, aside from driving the 2 blocks to work at the school every day, didn't go out much.  Her husband was a sweet, gentle man who kept a beautiful yard and gardens at their home, and worked as the janitor in the school she had charge over.  I began to wonder in my grade 6 year if the mondays when we had to move the desks in our classroom farther apart to accommodate her girth down the aisles came after some domestic difficulty between the two of them, and if she was as nasty to hm as she was to me. She was always in a bad temper when she walked into the room to find that she couldn't pass between the rows of desks.  It seemed to me a nifty way for him to have the last word, and it brought me comfort.


but even the dragon woman of hellementary school couldn't extinguish my love for books. there was recourse via the public library in town. when, years later, i read Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes, i envisioned this library as the one in the story.  It was one of those old Victorian looking buildings with many wide wooden steps rising to massive double-hung, heavy wooden doors opening to a mysterious maze of bookshelves that went up, and up into darkening infinity.  I really believed that they went up forever. I couldn't see the tops of them.  It always seemed to be dark in that library, and cool and echoing with silence. It was a place where you tiptoed, only speaking in to the librarian, and that in awe-struck whispers. A place where magic and mysteries were birthed. Years later, when I'd nearly forgotten how she'd tormented and terrorized me, I had a terrible shock.  At the first opportunity when I began high school, i made the pilgrimage to the school's large library.  I was so excited i was nearly spinning in circles.  I walked past the checkout desk and glanced over to see none other than an older, greyer, and broader Mrs. Evildragonwoman sitting behind it, with a name plate nearby declaring her head librarian.  she was looking straight at me with a furious scowl of recognition. I bolted for the girls' washroom and I cried.  I didn't ever go back.  She died years ago, but I may never find the generosity to forgive her for that.

I've learned, since my sessions with the counsellor who recommended that i read fewer books, to monitor my book reading.  It's an excellent guage of my mental health.  Too many books is an indicator of risky avoidance of important things; too few is a warning that my brain is overloaded - unable to concentrate even on what i love.

now as i reach the comfy side of 60 years old, i work part time in a small town library. today's libraries are different creatures entirely from my first love. there are few stairs, they have vast expanses of windows filling the space with sunlight, and they're wheelchair accessible.  They have many  programs for hordes of laughing, singing, boisterously playing children. We even have a Lego club on alternate Saturdays.  no one whispers anymore, and making paper books available is only one of many, many services we provide. a young girl came in a few weeks ago with her mother, having just moved to town from a bigger city where the library was not near home and accessible.  She'd never been to a library before.  when she learned that possession of the library card her grandmother gifted her with enabled her to take stacks of books home with her as often as she liked, she wandered around the library that first day in a daze, wide eyed and wearing a huge grin.  she's in every saturday to return an armful of books and check out another load.  last saturday she beamed up at me while i scanned her books through, and sighed,  "I love books." I smiled back and replied, "I know just what you mean."