It’s Saturday and the bad news was that I was stuck inside all day. The good news was that I was stuck inside all day at a library! Today seemed to be family day. Not every Saturday feels like that; a day filled with families that led me to my own memories of family and the libraries of my youth.

Lots of parents with their kids, and seemingly a lot of them were getting books to work on papers, or to read aloud. One set of sisters had two huge stacks of books. Their dad asked me, “Can they check out that many books?” The wonderful answer is “YES!” They were going on a road trip for spring break and wanted to make sure they had enough stuff to read. How great is that!  Sounded like me at their age.

Another mother had four or five books about sharks. I knew we had just received a brand new book with wonderful pictures of sharks, and even though the new book was over the reading level of the 8 year old that had to do the paper, she was thrilled to take it home.  I know her son will have a great time looking at the photos.  And there might be a bit of new information in there that he can tuck into that paper.  I don’t remember having to do papers when I was 8.  But that was so long ago I may have forgotten!

Another family came in, two kids, two parents, and sat down at our computers. Mom and Dad did email work while the kids played games. When they left they checked out a few family movies and some books to read aloud as well. Their experience just shows how multi-purpose today’s public libraries are.  In my day we took home books to read to each other, but there weren’t any movies to check out.  I am beginning to realize that it probably doesn’t matter if people check out movies, as long as they use our things to spend time together.  So this family will be watching movies together, where my family read together…it’s the together that matters.

An  older man was browsing in the DVD’s.  From behind he looked a lot like my Uncle R. who has been gone for over 15 years.  Even when he turned around he reminded me of my Uncle, one of the favorite people in my life when I was growing up.  Uncle R. was a big kidder, always had a joke, a laugh, a twinkle in his eye.  I smiled at my patron, the one who brought back all those memories, but he didn’t have a twinkle in his eye, in fact he seemed rather unhappy and abrupt.  Too bad.  But I still appreciated the moments remembering summer visits on the farm.  I wished my patron a good weekend, and he perked up a bit.  Maybe he just doesn’t have any adoring nieces at home!  That would certainly account for the grumpiness!

So it was a good day; and I brought some books home for me as well!  An added benefit of the work I do.