Libraries and librarians: a love letter
12-12-2019 marked our 8 year anniversary in the United States.
I will always remember the evening when we landed at JFK in New York, with our 5 month-old baby, three suitcases and a couple hundred dollars in our pockets (and about $3,000 in debt for our one-way plane tickets). I am sure this is a much better situation than other families who made it here so I’m not complaining. It’s just that for us, it was the bravest and craziest thing we’d ever done: venturing into the unknown, because of a dream. I don’t know if we we want to call it the American dream, or any parents dream to be able to offer their children what they didn’t have growing up. From thousands of miles away, and in 2011…it did seem here was the land of opportunities.
We came to the US with a job offer, I had a work visa so we weren’t completely lost or without purpose or income. But for 4 years, only I was allowed to work. My husband, on a dependent visa, stayed home with our daughter until our visa situation changed (a long, painful, and costly story for another time).
In those early days, our rented apartment was empty, my husband drove me to and fro work in a beat up car we bought for pennies from a used car salesman, and we had no idea if things would work out or if we had just made the biggest mistake of our lives, leaving everything behind. We didn’t have a bad life in Romania. We both had good jobs, owned our home, had our families, lots of friends…a true support system. Here, we were alone, we barely made it from paycheck to paycheck, and felt like outsiders most of the time.
Also, in those early days, as I was pushing my daughter’s stroller on the streets of our small town, I passed in front of the local library. Once. Twice. Three times. It was on our ‘regular’ route. A few weeks later, I finally walked in.
While I mostly felt lost outside of those library walls, inside…I felt like everyone else. And while being like everyone else had never been my goal in life, when you’re trying to build a new life for yourself and fit in, it’s not a bad idea.
I remember a nice lady explaining how the library card worked and telling me what documents I needed to bring to be able to borrow books. That was the first thing I did when we got our driver’s license. I went back to the library, and proudly presented my ‘proof of residence’.
The same nice lady showed me around, and then another lady gave me recommendations for books.
I went back to that library every couple of days for the 5 years we lived there. Everyone knew me, and I suspect at one point they also figured I was a writer, but they never said anything.
Those nice ladies changed my life, in a way they will probably never understand. Being ‘accepted’ there and welcomed, validated in a way what I wanted to do.
I had been writing for years, but until 2012, I had never put my writing in an organized novel format. In 2012 I started and finished a fantasy novel (and although nobody will ever see it), in it there are bits and pieces of those over a hundred books I read my first year on the East Coast.
In 2015, we moved to North Carolina for a year, before my day job brought us to the West Coast and the same thing happened. I met the most amazing people at the local library who made me feel ‘at home’ right away. in North Carolina I wrote another book (I wrote three in Massachusetts) and I read over a hundred. Fiction, non fiction, adult, kids, poetry. Everything. New releases, trending, forgotten.
In 2016, we moved to the West Coast and the first day (I am not kidding), I walked to the library, with my young daughter. I didn’t have a California license, only an electric bill, but couldn’t wait. The ladies there were just as kind and nice as those on the East Coast and I had my library card on the spot, and a tote full of books.
Every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday (sometimes more often), I would go to the library. I’ve bought hundreds of books in the last 8 years, but I’ve also read hundreds from the library. I’ve spent so many hours browsing the shelves, adding books to my hold shelf, and sometimes I’d just sit at a table writing.
Here as well, everyone knew me and if I missed a Wednesday, they’d worry.
This fall we moved about 70 miles from our first home in California. One of the saddest moments was when I had to say goodbye to our librarians and I saw the reaction on their faces. We had become like friends and it’s hard to say goodbye to a friend.
Our life is very different now than what it was 8 years ago. But one thing didn’t change. My absolute love for libraries and my deepest respect and appreciation and awe (for their time, dedication and altruism) for librarians. I wish I had properly thanked each and every one of them, each time we moved away. We did say our goodbyes, but I guess, back then, I didn’t know what else to say or how to say it.
I do now. To the wonderful ladies at the Waltham Public Library, West Regional Library in Cary, NC and Santa Teresa Branch Library in San Jose: THANK YOU! Thank you for helping me and making me feel welcome, when nobody else did. Thank you for providing a safe place, which became my beloved gateway all these years. Thank you for all your hard work, your smiles, kind words, your recommendations, the ‘blind date with a book’, your book sales (I know, I know…I kept buying books even when our small apartment couldn’t fit them, and you said you had the feeling we were going to get a bigger house to accommodate them….which we did). Thank you for caring. Thank you for giving this bookworm girl the ideal playground: and for allowing my imagination to roam freely, no matter what else was happening in my life. Libraries are a magical place for me, and will always be.
Maybe one day, one of my books will be on one of those shelves. And when that day comes, to me, it would all have come full circle.
I’ve been thinking for a while now to apply for a volunteer position with a local library and hopefully, that way, I can give back a little of what’s been given to me.
Tomorrow I’m going to the library in our small California town. They’re starting to know me here too:)
Until next time!
Keep Believing in Magic,
Olivia Lara