The Library
June 18, 2021
When I was five we lived on the ground floor, inside-corner of an L-shaped garden apartment on Grand Avenue in Leonia, NJ. It was a plain, two-story building made of brick. My parents had found it quickly without the opportunity for comparison. It must have been inexpensive too.
The inside of the L, which faced the lawn, had no windows. For our safety, when we went out into the garden to play my mother was forced to stop what she was doing to sit at the door and watch. Otherwise, it meant, my sister and I had to entertain ourselves indoors while she took care of the baby and cleaned, cooked and ironed. We didn’t own a television then. Instead, we would draw or play pretend until an argument broke out.
In the early morning my father would walk a block to the intersection of Fort Lee Road. The bus to New York City stopped there. My father could get on and ride up the long, slowly climbing hill, and cross over the George Washington bridge to the 178th Street bus station. From there, he walked to his job as a research scientist. He came back just the same way, often quite late.
Given the limitations of apartment life and my father’s long days, we spent a good part of each day out. My father had bought a car when we came to the US but my mother, too afraid to drive on the “wrong” side of the road, hadn’t passed the test yet. Instead, we walked everywhere.
The main road followed the bus route. It was hot in the summer and loud from all the trucks grinding their gears to get up the hill to the bridge. In summer and winter the wind blew steadily up from the broad, flat valley below. It stirred up the grit on the sidewalk and whipped the hair into my eyes. But, it was the only way to get to the center of town where we could buy food in the market, send air mail letters back to England at the post office and exchange books at the Library.
The Library faced Fort Lee Road and stood within the town park. It was old and had once been a family home. A simple wood-frame building, it was dirty white with dark green trim. The windows were tall and broad and evenly spaced around a center door with a gray slate roof and a fire escape on the left-hand end.
The children’s section took up all of the second floor. My mother would send my younger sister and I up the stairs while she cajoled the baby to sleep in her carriage in the first floor adult section.
To accommodate the high ceilings, the stairs went up in two sections with a broad landing in between. The stairs, the railing and the lower half of the walls were made of oak. The wood was heavily varnished and had gone a dark, molasses color with age. It was lovely to slide my hand up the cool banister, the stairs creaking with every step and the smell of dust and paper in my nose.
At the top of the stairs was the librarian's desk. The librarian was always a woman and cheerful and helpful. She took the bag of picture books we returned. Then, we were free to look around. We lay on our bellies on the floor in the stacks or dragged a pile of books to the wooden, child-sized chairs and table by the windows. We were not yet able to read so we looked at the pictures together and made up a story to go along.
The books were hardcover with waxy plastic sheeting to protect them from wear. The spines were numbered with the Dewey decimal system code and inside was a Manila pocket which held a pink index card stamped with the due date. The books crackled in their plastic and the pages were soft and slightly fuzzy from use.
In the children’s section were two large glass tanks. One, was a terrarium filled with moss and small plants. Moisture accumulated and slid down the walls in droplets. It was wet and green and smelled pleasantly of organic matter. The other was an aquarium. Algae had taken over and formed ropy, wafting columns throughout the water so that it glowed emerald and the fish living inside were hard to see. I often stood and looked into those tanks imagining being small enough to live among the plant and animal life.
I did, very quickly, learn to read fluently and with comprehension. It became an obsession not only to read books but to hoard them like treasure. I still appreciate a full bookshelf and it is hard to give them away.
I took pride in my ability. In the late ‘60s, schools distributed the weekly Science Research Associates (SRA) readers. I’m told they’re still in existence. The readers were printed on newsprint and color-coded to indicate the reading level from basic brown to exotic teal. My third grade teacher, Mrs. Bleakly, seemed to take pleasure in the weekly distribution of the SRAs, slowly walking between the rows of desks, carefully holding the reader above the head of each student so that everyone could see who was getting what. I’m sure it was a point of shame for many. My husband laments that his reading level was always brown.
I would get my come-uppance though. For some reason my ability to spell didn’t go along with my reading abilities. In the same classroom of steel and colored resin desks where I so diligently and delightedly read I also suffered the indignities of spelling bees. Mrs. Bleakly, rigid and insensitive (she once told me to go back to where I had come from), would line us up congo style and put us through two or even three rounds of spelling aloud. I was filled with dread the entire time, my hands behind my back literally praying to God for an easy one.
My rotten spelling didn’t hold me back from writing and illustrating my own stories, though. I made good facsimiles using brass paper fasteners to hold the construction-paper covers together. Later, in sixth grade, a friend and I would write a play based on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. We sat in the school hallway writing the parts out by hand on mimeograph sheets. It was performed and even went for a short tour.
The library was a refuge and a starting place for me. In it I became a reader and a writer and that opened up my intellectual and creative mind. Independently, I could explore whatever interested me. Reading and writing would take me away from the challenges of being a newly arrived immigrant who felt out of place, alone, and awkward. It would soften the edges of a family life fraught with anxiety. The Library would become a place of inspiration and freedom of thought at a time when the world was opening up for me with all the smells, sights and sounds of discovery. I explored, without judgement, my thoughts, feelings and ideas. It was a sensual experience; to read for the joy of it, without discretion or prejudice.
In 1969 the old library building was torn down to make way for a larger, modern building. The new library never held the same appeal for me. It was efficient and organized and no one looked the other way if you lay on the floor in the stacks. Though I couldn’t articulate it then, I think I knew intuitively that I had suffered a loss. I must have sensed that my life was changing and becoming more complex. The comfort, informality, and protection that I found in the old building would be replaced by challenging family realities and external pressures. I eventually would misunderstand my spelling difficulties to mean I couldn’t be a writer. So, by adolescence I would abandon my creative writing altogether.
Now, in my sixties, I am remembering the pleasure of the old library. And I am writing again. Regardless of the quality of my writing, I keep at it. I am doing the best I can to suspend judgement and just put it out there. Andy Warhol said, “don’t think about making art, just get it done.” Just keep going. Run your hand up the glossy, cool banister and rediscover the joy. Look for the fish in the Emerald green water.