Why Are You Here?

the little girl asks me. She's a regular at the library where I work, but that branch is closed for renovations, and now I'm at the main branch and feeling out of place and a smidge useless at the moment. Why AM I here? 

Because the other library is closed, says the little girl's mother. 

Why? says the little girl. 

Because they need to fix it.

Why?

Because it's broken. 

Why?

I used to have my own three-year-olds, so I know this can go on all day. I give the little girl a sticker. It's a bear wearing sunglasses. Why? the little girl asks me, and I want to say, I don't know. I don't know about anything anymore. We are living in strange times, where one moment you're feeling hope-y and change-y, and the next, you're googling How to Live under an Authoritarian Regime (Don't submit in advance) or scrolling around on Zillow searching for houses for sale in Blue States (Vermont looks nice). 

Instead, I say, Because he's a silly bear. 

Which seems to satisfy her because she goes off to play at the train table, and I head over to the story time area to sign in patrons for Baby Tummy Time. We didn't have this program at my old branch, and I am curious. Picture a circle of baby-sized yoga mats. Picture me flopping onto one of them. 

Okay, I would never do that, but the thought pings in my head. The world leaking in again. The weather. What one of my co-workers calls Wuthering Heights weather. Think gray. Think cold. Think emotionally immature vengeful lovers bellowing for each other across the moors.

The babies and their caregivers gather, and I try to sign them in, but the sign-in software doesn't make sense to me, and I resort to scribbling numbers on a post-it note. 22. Why would anyone want to have a baby right now? These babies, though. I wish you could see them. 

Some are so teeny tiny that when their grown-ups set them on the yoga mats, they immediately curl up like little pillbugs. An older baby rolls off her mat and keeps rolling across the carpet. The babies nurse. The babies cry. The babies sleep. One of the little pillbugs wakes up and lifts his head to look around. What does he make of this place? 

And what's with the old library lady cooing and sing-songing "Hello! Aren't you a cutie!" into his little face? Tummy-time's over and I'm back at the desk, the three-year-old patron at the train table, taking notice, skipping over sporting her sticker. 

You're here! she says. 

I nod and smile. I'm here. 

This Is Not a Drill

I am a teacher, and we are learning, in the elementary school where I work, about lockdowns. Say, a gunman enters the school. What do we do? The teachers in the room around me are taking notes, nodding solemnly to this presentation. I am thinking about my own children at a school only a few miles away, my son in third grade, my little daughter, just starting kindergarten. Oh my God. What do we do?

Don’t panic, says the presenter. 

When the alarm sounds, go to your classroom doorways, quickly. Step into the hallway and sweep inside everyone who is close by. The little boy on his way back from the drinking fountain. The little girl heading toward the restroom. Pull them into your room and lock the doors until the danger passes.

But I am still stuck in the doorway. What will happen to the kid inside the restroom? The housekeeper, pushing her mop at the other end of the hallway? The child late to school and just now bounding up the stairs? How wide can our arms sweep? 

And the gunman. Who is he? A teenager crying out for help from his distracted parents, ignored? (They bought him the gun.) A man angry about something or other. What he believes he is owed or a personal grievance or revenge or some warped desire for chaos, a need to burn it all down. 

I don’t have the mental energy for these people right now. First, my own doorway, my own classroom. And please, please, please, in the place where my children might be this moment, skipping down the hall, let a kind somebody sweep them inside  

where the room is warm and filled with books. Colorful art on the walls, plants on the windowsills. Where we sit, cross-legged on the floor together and rest up, ready ourselves to fight if we have to,

singing softly in the dark, telling each other stories. 

Over the Edge

Last night I didn’t want to look at the election results. I put my phone away. I was thinking, this is the Schrödinger's cat point of the timeline, where good things can still happen and I want to live in that space for a little while longer. 

My husband woke me up in the middle of the night. He said, He won. I couldn’t go back to sleep. I had to do my four-count breathing. I woke from a dream that all of the Harris signs in the neighborhood were flipped upside down. I realized, This is reality. Why am I fighting against it? 

It's what many people want. The name calling and the wrestlemania-like spectacle. The fear of Other, whoever Other happens to be. They want RFK Jr with his brain worm in charge of Health and Human Services and Elon Musk to tank the economy how he tanked Twitter. How do you argue with that?  

After the 2016 election, I walked around in a daze, worrying about abortion access and the hatred stirred up about Muslim people and Black people and Mexican people and disabled people. The newly elected president had proudly bragged that he could grab women anytime he wanted and they would let him. I tunneled back to an old traumatized childhood self and thought I might be losing my mind. 

But then I rallied. I threw myself into every resistance group I could find. I called congresspeople and went to protests. At the Women's March in DC I saw John Kerry walking down the sidewalk in his long dark coat. He was so tall and somber looking. It made me think of Abraham Lincoln. Kerry had been the Secretary of State and I imagined him thinking, Great, now all my work’s going to shit.  

The most important difference between the two candidates: she will accept the loss; he would never. Are people really okay with this? 

At the library we put up a display of cozy books. What will our patrons want to see on Wednesday when they walk in, looking for some sign that the world we live in is the same world we lived in yesterday. Books about knitting and making soup. Light mysteries and sentimental stories. I won't be there. 

My husband had a medical procedure yesterday, and I'm here with him at home. He’s fine. But there was a moment in the hospital while I was waiting for the news, and it could have gone either way. It can always go either way. I was looking at the other people waiting around me, some on their phones, some flipping through magazines. Over the intercom an urgent voice said, Code Blue Code Blue. We all looked up at the ceiling and we knew.

Someone was being lost or someone was being saved. Saved, I pray. Saved.

On Edge

The library where I work is closing next week for renovations. The renovations were going to take six weeks, and then they were going to take three months, and now they are going to take six months. Every day when I’m sitting at the desk, patrons look around and see the mostly emptied out book shelves, the boxes, the bare wall where we used to hang a lovely quilt, and say, What’s happening?  

Next to the desk, there's an eight feet tall sign that gives all the details of the closing and the renovation, but for some reason no one sees this sign. 

No one reads signs, Jody, my old circ manager used to say. I argued with her until I witnessed it firsthand. This was maybe five years ago when the library changed the traffic pattern in the parking lot. The city put up a giant flashing sign, the kind you see on the highway to alert drivers that there’s construction ahead. The sign was comically enormous, blazing lights on the library lawn. 

But the day they changed the traffic pattern, there were fender benders and near misses in the parking lot, patrons running into the library, breathless, freaked out, shouting, You should put up a sign! I could hear the circ manager sighing in my head. 

What is it about signs that we can’t seem to see them? The impeding library closure is getting me down. That, and the election. To get away from it all, my husband and I head out to one of our county’s metro parks. 

This is a goal we have, to visit each of the twenty metro parks. Today, we’re on number three, Blacklick Woods. The place is known for its three-story tree canopy walk, a wooden structure that looks like the base of a roller coaster. We huff it up the stairs and trek around the path, and it really does seem like we’re up in the tree canopy. 

Another fun feature: a rope bridge. There’s a long line to cross, and I join it. I don’t know why. Normally, I am afraid of heights. A sign hangs overheard. Only four on the bridge at a time. Maybe we’re all a little afraid of heights or maybe waiting in line gives you plenty of time to read, because everyone does the right thing and takes their turn. 

When it’s mine, I only hesitate for a second. My library branch will close and then it will reopen. The election will happen and someone will win and we will help each other through whatever happens next. I set my foot down on the ropes, a whir in my ears as I peer down to the ground. 

Another step, and the wooden poles keeping all of us aloft, sway. 

Hold. 

Costume Party

At the Halloween party we are all masked and wearing black. When my friend and I walk through the door, the hosts greet us and tape a name on our backs. It’s a literary character or a famous person, someone scary or someone who wears a mask. We’re supposed to mingle around the room and ask questions until we guess who we are. 

My friend is Captain Ahab. Am I a man? she says. 

Yes. 

Am I in a book? 

Yes. 

Is it a horror novel? 

No, but maybe, psychologically. My friend is stumped. My mask is lacy and blocks out my peripheral vision. The light in the room is orange and the black shapes of the guests drift around me. Am I a woman? I ask Dr Frank-n-furter from the Rocky Horror Picture Show. 

Yes, he says. 

Am I in a book? 

Yes. 

Is it a children’s book? 

Yes. 

Hmm. 

The hosts are a writer and a professor. Pretty much everyone at the party is a writer or a professor. The Wicked Witch of the West asks me how my writing's going lately, and I am stumped. Not great, I say, and I switch the subject. Is my character the main character? 

No, the Wicked Witch of the West says. 

I bump into a man wearing a black cape. I sneak a peek at his back. Cruella de Vil. He’s talking about the upcoming election. It’s going to be close, he says. She’s going to win, but it will take a long time to count the votes and there will be conspiracy theories swirling around and potential chaos. 

Are you a political science professor? I ask him.

No, I’m a professor of German history. I’m teaching a class this semester on fascism in Germany in the 1930s. He tells me he has two students in his class who have turned him into the administration for being a communist. I’m going to try to ride it out, he says, until I can retire in a couple of years and then I’m going to move to Germany. 

I don’t know how to respond to this. Am I a scary person? I say, gesturing vaguely at my back. 

Yes, Cruella de Vil says. 

I help myself to crackers and cheese and swallow down a glass of red wine. Earlier in the day I went to the farmer’s market and bought apples and lettuce and two poblano peppers. I gave the rosemary bread lady a bouquet of rosemary sprigs that I’d just cut from my garden. The sky was bright blue and you could almost forget that fascism might be coming to America. 

Back at the party I’ve learned that the author of my character’s book is British and the book was written in the twentieth century. Is it Peter Pan? 

No. 

Is it Harry Potter? 

No. 

Something by Roald Dahl? 

Yes. 

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? 

No. 

Matilda? 

Yes. 

I’m stumped. The only character I know in Matilda is Matilda. 

It’s the teacher, Miss Trunchbull, my friend Captain Ahab tells me. This feels anti-climactic. We’re back to talking about politics and is it privileged to want to move somewhere safe? 

Yes. 

But where is safe? 

Berlin is really nice, says Cruella De Vil. I eat a slice of apple tart. I take a picture of myself and send it to my daughter. 

She texts back: Mom, your mask is upside down. 

I laugh and slip it off. The light in the room is a soft golden and the black shapes are lovely, ordinary people. I am thinking about how when I gave the rosemary bread lady the rosemary sprigs, she was so happy, she hugged me. 

Reminder

The pre-school kids on their class visit to the library are cute. They file down the stairs with their fingers against their lips. Shh shh, they say loudly to each other. When they troop past me, they tap their heads and make wide motions with their arms. You’re a library person, one of the little girls tells me, doing the wide arm motion thing again. This means, Library Person. 

Okay, I say. They dance around me as I help them pick out books. The easy ones. Dinosaurs. Princesses. Puppies. Dragons. The more difficult to find. A book about Aurora. A book in the Pig the Pug series. No, not that one. No, not that one either. The one with the orange cover? Yes! The girl who wants an Aurora book is still waiting. (Who is Aurora? I have to google it. Ah. It’s Sleeping Beauty. But we’re out of Sleeping Beauty books.) How about Cinderella? 

No.

Belle? 

No.

Elsa?

No.

One of my co-workers digs around in the back room and comes out with a Little Mermaid book and saves the day. Sorry she was being so picky, one of the teachers tells me, but I wave it off. She knows what she wants. 

Home in the afternoon, and I sit down at my desk to work on the book I’ve been trying to write, but nothing comes. The main character doesn’t know what she wants. This is a problem in a story because wanting is the whole shebang. It goes like this: 

What does the hero want? What is standing in her way? Which leads to conflict. Which keeps the reader turning pages. Think: Dorothy wanting to make it home to Kansas. Or Chief Brody wanting to catch the shark so it will stop eating people over Fourth of July weekend. 

Meanwhile, my character is schlumping around wanting nothing. The world she’s in won’t stop morphing and changing. The world I’m in won’t stop either. I used to be able to do this better. Fit my noise-cancelling headphones over my ears and muffle out the distractions. What if I have lost my writer self? 

Here is something I want. A library person to greet me at the door, welcome me in. Find the missing writerly pieces on the shelves and give them back. 

The pre-school kids finish their visit. They skip past me holding their books. One of them makes the wide armed sign again, and I laugh as I remember. It's me. I am the library person. 

 

Lucky Charm

My daughter is visiting for the weekend, and we browse the shops in my neighborhood. The place where she likes to get custard. The thrift store with the colorful glassware. The feminist gift shop that sells build-your-own charm necklaces. 

Let’s make a necklace, my daughter says.  

No, I think. It’s a reflex from an old self. The one who worries about money, the one who pooh-poohs silly trinkets. All week I’ve been on edge, crossing my fingers for friends in North Carolina who are cleaning up after a hurricane. Another hurricane that just barreled past an aunt who lives in Florida. And how did I end up so lucky, a beautiful fall day in Ohio, a daughter who wants to pal around with me and make a silly necklace?  

Yes, I say, and we spend a ridiculous amount of time pawing through the various charms. Mostly this is me. I forgot to bring my reading glasses, and I can’t see what I’m pawing through. A dog’s face or is that a mouse? Some kind of plant? A feather? 

My daughter laughs. It’s weed, Mom.  

Oh. Ha. Okay. When it’s time to pay, the clerk says I’ve won a chance to roll the dice to win up to fifty percent off my purchase. She hands me a beachball-sized die. I roll it on the floor and it lands on a picture of a cat. The clerk cheers. A cat is the fifty percent off symbol. I am over-the-top excited about my win, posing for pictures, holding the dice, grinning next to my daughter, the two of us festooned in our matching half-price necklaces.

Later, we gorge ourselves on custard and binge-watch a trainwreck of a reality TV show. The stars on the show keep talking about how they feel, but for some reason they pronounce it “fill.” The word echoes in my head, the heartbreak of it, the absurdity. How they fill. How I do. 

Why is it one person's turn for tragedy, another's turn for joy? And what a thin line separates the two. A senseless shift in the weather. A roll of a die.