They kept secrets locked in resource rooms, then opened the doors. They knew if the day’s newspapers had already been folded into their shelves or had not come yet or contained news that might be historic.
They mastered the trembly microfiche readers. The librarians thumbed the card catalogs with speed. It was also there that I began to observe the stewards of curiosities and dreams-the librarians who always somehow knew, or seemed to know, or took pleasure in helping another search out answers to the questions and the yearnings (some explicit, some not) that showed up at the desk. It was in libraries, as a non-Gym kid, that I became a true journey-er in the land of books. But the primary stories of my childhood home were the stories that were sung to us from the 33 rpms- West Side Story, Windjammer, Thumbelina, The Music Man, Dumbo. My mother crouched behind the battered couch to put on puppet shows. My father was an engineer who told us tales about refineries and chemistry. Rattling along behind the raucous return-book carts and seeking out the books’ Dewey Decimal homes. I’m not sure whose idea it originally was, but whenever my schedule would have sent me off to Gym class, I was to report to the library instead, and not just to read but to work. In between I was banished from contact sports, push-ups, and dodgeball. Finally, at sixteen, I had surgery again to remove the iceberg of bone that had floated, alone, from the ports of childhood to adolescence. My subsequent casts were various and many-some fixed, some removable, none of them pretty. My first cast stretched fingertip to shoulder. I remember the anesthesia swoon when I, from surgery, emerged. I remember the smell of the beach on him when he finally showed up. At the hospital the only doctor who could put the bones of my left wrist back together again was vacationing at the shore. When gravity smashed me back down to earth, I heard my body crack. When, one day, the rusty chain snapped, I flew my highest yet. Singing and swinging, swinging and singing, I brushed the billowed clouds with the soles of my sneakered feet.
The coil chains of the backyard swing sang along with me: “Kum Ba Yah.” “Chim Chim Cher-ee.” That answer that was blowing in the wind.
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