It’s my library. It is now. I’ve taken possession of it. It’s taken possession of me.

I got my things together. My pouch which held my phone, my wallet which had my library card, my mask just in case, my pen if I wanted to write anything down. I remembered I could always find paper to write on in the library. And I had my glasses with the magnetized dark overlay for outside in the sun. And my hat because Kristina said, “Don’t forget your hat. Protect your head.” And Kleenex in my pocket to blow my nose. And a carry bag in case I found something or checked something out. And my walking sticks because they were still helpful and would be for a while yet. You’d think I was going on a safari.

So I was ready.

And I rolled up my sleeves because it was already hot.

And I walked down the hill to the corner. I passed the church pre-school where parents were picking up their children. One mother with her little boy was putting something in the car, saying, “We can’t spend very long at the library, we have to go get Dad, but we’ll check out the books you ordered….” So I knew they were going my way to the same destination.

There were little children on the sidewalk with parents, school was just out, and they looked so cute, adorable, and I thought, “Kids are just like people, only little. They have little hands, they have little clothes and walk around on little feet in little shoes and have little high voices and say words you can understand as parents and children talk back and forth,” and I felt very philosophical to see the future and know that, at least right here, it was going to be alright.

And the mother and her little boy, wearing a little cap, passed me on the way downhill, but I caught up and pressed the button to stop the traffic and change the light to walk.

I wanted to say what a joy it is to see the wonderful parents taking their wonderful children to the wonderful library to check out the wonderful books, but I didn’t get the chance to gush because they’d already gone on ahead. Then I caught up again at the foot of the steps, the little boy going up the ramp, his mother pausing to chat with a woman sitting while a little baby in a diaper was crawling vigorously up the walkway to the door, then turning around and crawling frantically back down.

The young mother and her son went on into the library and I unleashed the words on the sitting woman, “What a joy it is to see the wonderful mothers with their wonderful children….” And the woman interjected, “Grandmother,” and I didn’t have to say the expected, “You don’t look old enough to be a grandmother,” because she’d probably already heard it too many times before.

So I went up the walk and into the library. And there at the desk was the guy from before who had been so effectively friendly with everyone at just the right level, especially good with children establishing a back and forth, and he acknowledged me as if he remembered, and maybe he did. And on my left was a girl at the desk counter, Kristina would probably caution me about saying “girl,” I should say young woman, so a young woman was holding down that side of the counter and she responded with delight as I gushed about the library and how I loved it and everyone on the staff, and all the wonderful books, and all the wonderful people who come there to read them, and the head librarian I like a lot was standing right there between them hearing everything, and I said to the young woman what a wonderful head librarian they had, she smiled and chuckled to let me know she knew I knew she was there, and I said to the young woman how I had said previously in the librarian’s hearing how she had chosen and assembled a superb staff, and she had said, “I didn’t get to choose them, they’re sent from the system,” and I had said how masterfully she had set the tone for the library everyone so friendly, how those staff rotated through the system to this location said this was the branch where they preferred to work because everyone was so friendly and got along so well together, and I could see their eyes almost glazing over because I was going on and on so long as I tend to do, like Joyce who goes on for pages in a single sentence, and I said, “I’d better go look at the books.”

And I did.

And I went to the shelves where the books are for sale from donations, and there was a cart and table with display, books available as prizes for children who entered the contest, and they won little tickets and could choose a book free if they were winners, and it seemed they always were.

And I looked at the sale shelf and went around to the other side and looked some more. There was the book I had seen last time, a big Hillerman-edited collection of The Best of the West, but I passed on it again because I was looking for the books Hillerman himself had written.

I found a book I knew Kristina and Chaz would like, Ray Kurzweil’s The Singularity is Near. I knew they knew not only who he is, but what he’s done and how important it is. I felt the triumphant satisfaction of being able to bring something home to a welcome and probably to acclaim. I did good.

I also found two CDs. One, Antal Dorati conducting the Dances of both Kodaly and Bartok all on one record. A real find I was looking forward to hearing.

And one more CD, Josh Groban, Illuminations. Songs that looked like they’d be pretty good. I had been trying to get Groban into the family consciousness, and this looked like my chance. I had liked him for quite some time, hadn’t heard him recently enough, so it was a chance for me too. I remember his beautiful voice. Even Andrea Bocelli had said so. I think they both sang something together. And he sang some legit stage work as Pierre Bezukhov in Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812. I rehashed what little I know about his career, Carnegie Mellon University, Anatoly Sergievsky in Chess, the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Jimmy Kimmel Live, Late Show with David Letterman, that sort of thing.

I put my treasures in my carry bag and went on to the back of the library to find a comfy chair.

I sat, looked at my treasures, and looked around the library.

I saw an elderly man with gray hair sitting on my left, intently reading a book. I saw the woman with her little boy over on the far right, and a slightly older boy with blond hair came over to the comfy chair in front of me and opened his book and started reading. Across from him, an older lady was immersed in the newspaper. The blond boy turned the page of his book and I saw it was a hard back comic book. One of the middle tables in the extra wide aisle held a tall slender young black woman reading, while the little boy previously in question sat at her feet with his own book. His mother came by, talked briefly with the woman who was a friend or baby sitter or fellow parent, and went back to her other child. The library was there for everybody and that’s the way it should be.

I looked around some more. There are windows you can look out of, and driving by at night if the lights are on, they glow.

I felt that we all felt that anybody would be welcome here, and that’s a feeling I don’t always get in disparate neighborhoods. I could see we all loved the library, that it was our library.

A middle aged Asian man came to the table nearest me, put down his pack, took out his lap top, power cables, mouse and cord. He plugged in to the power strip on the floor along the wall, opened up his computer, and set to work.

It’s true that the library doesn’t have everything for everybody, but it has plenty for everybody who comes in. I saw a staff woman on the right kneeling before the young adult shelves, selecting books and putting them on a cart. She seemed to be curating selections for a rotating display to attract the attention of teenagers as they came in.

The head librarian walked through from table to table and by the chairs, to see that everyone had what they wanted. She came to the elderly gentleman on my left, said something to him I think to tell him the terminal he had wanted was now available. He thanked her, and went back to finishing the page he was reading.

Being in the library is like being home. You’re where you belong, surrounded by parts of your life, things you’ve grown up with, people you get to know beyond the nod of recognition.

You come back to the library with the comfort of knowing it’s there, and always will be, welcoming you with open arms to the books that open you to the world.

Your life becomes more than it was.

Thank you, Kensington Library, for welcoming me into my future. I will come back again, and again, and again.