I don’t know if it’s excitement to be done with school or nervousness to be done with school (that “what’s next” I just wrote about). Or the pile of books I plan to read and am genuinely giddy about (I already tore through two books over the last four days!). Or an upcoming project I’ve been asked to edit (I am honored, both professionally and personally). Or that when I drove back to the cottage yesterday after being away for a few days, I saw a farmstand with a sign for peaches. Already! Or that I plan to take a break from work one morning this week to pick blueberries at the farm from which I’ve been picking blueberries almost my entire life.
I was at home in the city for the weekend, and I couldn’t sleep there. The bedroom was too warm, the dog nextdoor barked on and off throughout the night from a room below my bedroom window just off their driveway (he doesn’t normally bark throughout the night). And our little city was even quieter than normal—the usual revving engines late into the night was oddly not happening. But I couldn’t sleep last night once I arrived here at the cottage, either, where I usually sleep like a champ, and I can find no obvious reason for that.
The paper I’ve dedicated the last 13 weeks (mainly, but I’ve been thinking about it since I began this masters program) of my life to is about 98% done. I have some finishing touches, a final review, and I plan to turn it in before the end of the week. I’m wondering if once I submit it, that’s when I’ll sleep? We’ll see.
I also reinstated my library card over the weekend. This is A Big Deal, to me, anyway. I grew up going to the library with my mom at least twice a week. She got a break from my brother and I there, sending us off to the kids’ section while she dove into her own books. We went home with armloads of books between us. We were voracious, and the library was our respite from being always stretched thin, money-wise. Unlike at stores, we could get whatever we wanted there, at least up to the limit of what we were allowed to check out at one time. I felt rich walking the three blocks home with my stash of books—all mine.
So of course I took our kids to the library in the city we raised them in, a few miles away from my family home. My kids loved the children’s section with its carpeted claw-foot bathtub for cozy reading. It seems to be less quiet than my hometown library, and it is in a gorgeous historical house. We couldn’t quite walk there when my kids were little, but just after our oldest bumped into double digit ages we moved into a house just a few blocks away from the library, and I became a regular again. Life was busy, though, and my record for returning books on time got mighty shaky, until some years ago I borrowed some books on CD, somehow lost one of the CDs, and found myself too ashamed to go back.
It was easy to buy books online by that point, or at used book stores when I came across them, or by e-reader, so that’s what I did. But I’m trying to be a conscientious consumer these days, and, well, I decided to be brave and go back to the library and see if they would reinstate my card. I have to say, of all the places where one should expect kindness and understanding, a library might top that list. I was (very nicely) reinstated, and instead of walking out with an armful of books I might be lousy about returning on time, I left with directions on how to set up my old e-reader to borrow books. Voila! And maybe this winter when I am in the city more I’ll be brave again and borrow physical books (and set up copious reminders to get them back on time).
I dream of sumac and milkweed (and other wild things) 