Like a Child in a Library

I took Jimmy’s boy to the library.

I hadn’t planned to take him to the library that particular day. But we’d finished touring the city’s Christmas display and it was time for me to run errands, and Jimmy’s boy didn’t want to go home yet. He wanted to sit in the car and eat the candy he’d bought. I said that he could ride along for my errands with Adrienne and me, as long as he promised to brush his teeth when he got home. So we went through the car wash together, and we grabbed some fries at a fast food restaurant to wash down all that candy, and then we went uptown to the library.

“Have you been to the library before?”

No, he hadn’t. I’m sure he’d been to his school’s library, but not a public library. Steubenville has two public libraries: a very old library downtown, with guinea pigs in the children’s room, and a relatively new library uptown, with turtles in the children’s room. The downtown library was built in 1902, thanks to a donation from the notorious capitalist Andrew Carnegie. The uptown library was built in 1987, thanks to a donation from the family of a local businessman, Albert Schiappa. Jimmy’s boy hadn’t been to either. I took him to the Schiappa library, with the turtles.

“Now, this is the front desk where people go to borrow books,” I said in my very best teacher voice.

“Where is the–” began Jimmy’s boy politely.

“And this is the adult section, where you can get fiction and nonfiction books for grownups with lots of long chapters in them. This is their reference room, where you can look up the history of your ancestors.”

“Where is the–”

“And if you’ll just come back here, there are all kinds of CDs and DVDs to borrow if you’ve got a DVD player, in case you want to listen to music.”

“Can we go to the–”

“And THIS,” I said, leading him to the spacious back of the building, “Is the kids’ section!”

Jimmy’s boy’s face lit up as if I’d shown him a pirate’s treasure trove.

Adrienne excused herself to go get a book from the teen section. She and Jimmy’s boy have both been diagnosed with dyslexia, but she taught herself to read fluently in her own way since beginning middle school, and now goes through a fat novel or two every week. Jimmy’s boy is still struggling with fluency, but he likes stories as much as any other child. I took him up and down the aisles, explaining as I did. “The fiction books, the made-up stories, are organized by the first letter of the author’s last name so that you can find them easily. The nonfiction books over here, they’re organized by the subject. See, these are Bibles and Lives of the Saints. These are fairy tales. These are books about Christmas. And here are some books about history! Look, this one is about the Civil War.”

Just then, Jimmy’s boy found the Dr. Seuss books. He recognized them from his school. They are his favorites. He took a book over to the toy section, where there are cars and a dollhouse.

“Read to me while I play,” said Jimmy’s boy.

I opened the book he’d selected.  It was one Adrienne used to make me read until I was so sick of it that I hid it under the mattress. Now, of course, I miss it. “Up. Pup. Pup is up.”

Jimmy’s boy played happily with the toy cars until I got to the part about the brother who can read big words like “Constantinople” and “Timbuku.” Then Adrienne went to the desk to check out her books, and we went with her.

“This young man wants a library card,” I said, “But I’m not his mom. I’m just his aunt. Does he need a parent to sign him up?”

He did need a parent, so I promised to bring him back with his mother another day.

Nobody had better call me generous. Befriending the neighborhood children and becoming their honorary aunt who takes them on field trips is self-preservation. I do it because it’s fun, and it makes me happy.

I used to have a notion that God wanted us to be miserable in this life, so we could earn happiness in the next life by our perseverance. I’ve grown up a little since then. Now, I think that God would be pleased if all of us were happy, in this world and the next. Suffering does happen in this fallen world, and it happens often. But that’s not God’s will. God wants us to be happy. You still have to try and be good to  your neighbor when it’s hard, and it can be very hard. But the commandment to love our neighbor was given to us, because when neighbors love and take care of one another, it makes us happy.

How are you going to make yourself, and your neighbors, happy in the coming year? It doesn’t have to be the same way I do.  Find your own way.

May it make you as happy as a child visiting the library for the first time.