Until very recently, my fondness for libraries has hovered in the area of my affections reserved for places like the creek behind the house where I grew up and the very end of Topsail Island: memories of sights, sounds, tastes, textures, and smells that glow warmly in my memory. There is a list of them: the Riverside Elementary School Library, the Suwanee Public Library, the Weddington Middle and High School Libraries, the Matthews Public Library, and (though not always the most calming place on Earth) even Kenyon’s Olin and Chalmers Library. Each building stands apart from the other. A different Reader Taylor lives in the memories of each.
But I can’t help but feel that a library—any library—could feel like home if I wanted it to. Perhaps it’s the books that make the place. That’s the easiest answer, and it’s easy for a reason. I love libraries because I love books. The stories themselves, the beautiful covers, and the feel of the pages (and the occasionally rough outside edges that sometimes make the page harder to turn but also somehow makes the book something even more wonderful) have always been a comfort to me. Libraries, then, are full of those little escapes, those empathy-makers, those loneliness-banishers.​However, a library isn’t just the books. It’s the smell, the tables, the chairs, the reverent pillowing hush that settles over you like a cloud. It’s the people who sit behind the desk and help you when you need it, send you out into the world with a piece of their place in your arms. It’s you, running your fingers along the spines, judging books by their covers (we all do it, don’t be ashamed), wondering if you can fit any more into the bag your mother gave you. And there was never enough room in your arms or the beach bag to fit all the books, but that was okay, because they would still be there when you came back. Or they wouldn’t, but you could request it and wait until it appeared on the hold shelf with your name on the little slip.
A place is more than just a place. It’s a collection of things, people, memories, and thoughts. And the library is filled with the best kinds of gently-used, ready-to-share, excited-to-listen-and-be-heard things.
Maybe I’m biased. If I zoomed out a little, maybe I can capture the respect of those poor souls who detested libraries, who groaned when Mom dragged them there, told them to “pick at least two books” before they could play on the computers.
Even if you only looked forward to playing on the computers, you were still a part of the library’s community. That, I think, is what makes libraries homes for so many people. Inside all those buildings is a community of people willing to help one another, to share books and tables and reading rooms and computers.​When I job shadowed at the Mulberry Branch of the New York Public Library earlier this year, there was a line of about twenty people waiting for the doors to open. For some of them, it was an escape from the cold. For others, it was a place to sit and concentrate on work. For the little girl and her brother who came over after school let out, it was a safe place where she could ask the librarians for help on her schoolwork while her mom finished her shift at work.
Even here, at Kenyon, the library feels less like a storage building and more like a meeting-place. During the most hellish weeks of the year—when finals week starts to loom and deadlines all decide to match each other—the library becomes a place where people share in that stress. Suffering together, I guess. On those days, the hushed cloud that hangs around the ceiling has less of a glow and more of a gloom. But the books are still there. The people. The chairs. The employees behind the desks waiting to help.
When I think about all these libraries, all those buildings and rooms that helped define me as a reader, a writer, a student, and a person, I can see a different iteration of myself at each of those places. The Taylor who shelves books and works the desk at Olin feels different from the Taylor who went to Battle of the Books practice with Mrs. Minsker at the Weddington Middle School Library, who in turn feels different from the Taylor who would waddle towards the checkout desk at the Suwanee Public Library, arms pin straight, using my chin to steady the pile of books I wanted to check out that week. And yet, maybe they’re not all that different.​All of this is to say, I guess, that I’ve only just now started to realize that maybe those are the places where I want to spend the rest of my life. I want to add my words to the shelves, and I’d like to sit behind the desk and wait for little girls to ask for help on their homework. Riverside Elementary School Library Taylor might be disappointed that I didn’t end up a “professional tap dancer” (apparently that’s what I wanted to be when I grew up, according to my kindergarten yearbook), but I’d like to hope she’d be happy to see me behind that desk someday.
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Image Credit: Taylor Hazan