Francis Gay

I ALWAYS knew there was more to libraries than just books, but...

The man ahead of me had been copying a form to send away. The librarian checked the address on the envelope matched that on the form. She checked he had signed the right places and the date was correct. She put it in the envelope, took it out again, checked everything one more time, then sealed the envelope.

“You can post this without worrying now,” she told him. “I’ve done that worrying for you.”

After he left she explained he had an obsessive-compulsive disorder and would have made himself ill fretting about the form if he had sent it himself.

Someone to do your worrying for you – of all the wonderful things a library has to offer, that must be one of the best. JON and his sister Kirsten said goodbye... a little formally, I thought. “No hugs?” I asked him later. He explained he would like to have that kind of relationship, but they had been raised separately after a divorce and didn’t have that closeness.

“I’d really like us to be closer,” he said, “but that’s just the way it is.” “No,” I said. “That’s the way it was.” Two years later I saw Jon welcome Kirstin to his house (a regular visitor now) with the warmest of hugs and listened as they made plans for their new babies to grow up as the closest of cousins.

There’s “how it was”, “how it is” and “how we would like it to be”. Only the first of those is fixed in stone, the second is open to interpretation and the third is ours to shape if only we will.