Did You Get Your Just Desserts in a Library?

How much of a difference has the library made in your life? Do you remember your first visit to a library? How about the very first time you checked a book out with your very own libary card? The library is a lot more than dry texts lined up on shelves. What kind of dessert have you found at the libary?

My mother got me interested in books at a very young age. She read to me with such mesmerizing skill that everything she read took on a life of its own. She showed me a world between two book covers.

The second I began to understand the concept that letters made words and words made stories, I was hooked. That was a powerful feeling. As soon as I learned the alphabet and the beginnings of reading, I took off into another realm.

I could be seen reading everything I could get my hands on, even things I wasn't supposed to like my father's papers. I got my first library card of my own in 1st grade while we were living in a suburb of Chicago. An outing to the library was a wonderful thing to me. Books were dessert. No one had to force me to get ready to go. I was the first one in the car, eagerly waiting to get on the road.

Walking through that library door was like walking onto a plane that would take me wherever I wanted to go. It was another form of exploration to me. It was another way to expand my horizons.

The summer after I got my first library card, the local library had a reading award for the children who wanted to reach certain levels of reading. I don't remember what the levels were or how much I had to read, but I remember the thrill of going for that goal and achieving it.

First I got an " I am a member of the library reading club" pin. Then after I had read a certain amount I got a bookworm pin. To that little child I was then I had just earned my own gold medals. Somewhere in all our travels those precious pins got lost but I have never forgotten how that library looked or the feeling of earning those simple awards. They were just icing on the cake though, because it meant I could read.

In elementary school in Germany, the sixth graders would receive special awards at an assembly at the end of the year. Whatever was earned at that ceremony represented achievements throughout the elementary school years. This was a big deal. If you got called to the podium for one award you felt very lucky. I earned three and almost a fourth.(I placed second for the English award.) I would have liked to have been there that day to receive them. I worked hard for them.

Sadly we moved two weeks before the ceremony took place, but my teachers knew these were special awards and mailed them on to me in The Netherlands. I still have the three I earned, framed. of course.

One of the awards was for library service. I had spent much of my free time working in the library throughout the years that I attended that school. I loved it there. I was given trust at a young age and put to work doing all kinds of jobs around our school library. I took a lot of pride in that work. Their faith and trust in me was merited. No one had to twist my arm. So again the award although very prized by me was icing on the cake. I was at the library surrounded by books and nice people.

In my second college I volunteered to help set up a new departmental library. I put a lot of time in there as the second in command of the work. It turned out the department head got to know me better that way too, so when applications to get in came up again she knew my face, knew my dedication and I was accepted into the severely impacted program. Again it was a bonus that came about because of my involvement with the library.

Every place I have gone, the library and books have been steady companions. In the turmoil of teen years, it was a refuse. In other countries it was another way to learn about the places I made my home. The world was at my fingertips there.

My dream fantasy room in a house, any house, was and is a library. In the old musical "My Fair Lady", Henry Higgins had a library that was right out of my fantasies. In the Disney full length animated movie "Beauty and the Beast", the beast had a library that knocked my socks off. Even though it was only a cartoon, my eyes lit up when I saw him open the doors into that room and saw what was behind them.

Today in the post I received a prize I won for my entry into the free2 contest sponsored by all the public libraries in The San Francisco Bay Area. Entrants had to write in 25 words or less what the library left us Free2 do or be. Of course I am thrilled to win something for writing since that is one of my great loves and now my profession .

I was one of the ten winners. The prize is wonderful and generous, an IPOD Shuffle and a Flip Ultra Video Camera, plus a chance to be in future advertising for the campaign to bring people to the library.(If that involves photos of me, I don't think I will use that option. However if they want to use my words and name or have me write something more for them, that I would gladly do.)

What I wrote for my entry reflected a lifetime of what the library has done for me and what it will continue to do. Yet again the prize is icing on the cake. It is a much nicer icing but still a bonus to the fact the libraries are there and free for all of us to use. As my entry said, "I am Free2 reach beyond myself, into a vision of the world and all its magnitude, gathered and presented at my local library."