The Southern Branch of the Orange County Library System in Carrboro has been open since February, but this week was my first visit. I was biding my time while my car was being repaired up the street. I was tempted to work in one of the cubicles on the far side but found myself tucking my laptop under my arm and meandering.
The opposite side of this library is devoted to the children’s space with Legos, art supplies and picture books. A tutor worked a math problem with a student at a small desk. Other small children were hopping around, cocking their heads in different directions, like sparrows.
The natural light from the tall windows streamed upon handsome desks and soft-backed chairs arranged across the spacious adult area. Board games, DVDs and a puzzle exchange were stocked on shelves between the seating areas. Along the wall was a pledge for residents to “leave your leaves” on the ground in support of a healthy ecosystem and an advertisement about a fundraising dinner at Vimala’s Curryblossom Café for PORCH Chapel Hill-Carrboro. My breath caught when I realized that a display case containing six containers of innocent-looking soil was a memorial taken from the ground where six lynchings had occurred across Orange County.
A public library is, by definition, open to all, from the toddler pulling down books faster than her mother could reshelve them to the elderly gentleman softly snoring in a chair to the woman reading the funnies from Sunday’s newspaper out loud to herself.
A library is also about books. George Saunders’s Lincoln in the Bardo is the book for the October book club, a suitably spooky choice. I cracked open Steven Petrow’s The Joy You Make. Owing to my location, I perused the chapter on the joy of reading and discovered the author’s assertion that “fiction serves as a gateway to empathy.” I think that’s probably true.
But then, I looked at the very real people around me. How might I empathize with them? Three teenagers had their heads huddled over a phone. The mother had corralled her book-tossing child, who giggled in her arms. The elderly gentleman roused himself, yawned and stretched his arms over his head with a smile. A college-aged individual wearing a T-shirt that reads “Yes, we really do need all these rats” inquired whether they could join me at my table. I grinned: “Of course, you can!” I was happy to be in this shared space where we are neighbors and joyfully so.
Andrew Taylor-Troutman is the author of the book with Wipf and Stock Publishers titled This Is the Day: A Year of Observing Unofficial Holidays about Ampersands, Bobbleheads, Buttons, Cousins, Hairball Awareness, Humbugs, Serendipity, Star Wars, Teenagers, Tenderness, Walking to School, Yo-Yos, and More. He lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina where he is a student of joy.
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