Twenty Years Ago, I Wrote This

I remember that I printed it in my high school's library and somehow forgot and left a copy in the printer.  The librarian found it and brought it to me, and told me that she was very impressed with my writing.  At the time I was very into fairies and urban fantasy.  I didn't edit this for grammar, although I wanted to.


     Shadow of a woman against the crumbling garden wall.

     Whisper of long skirts through the tall grass.  The budding roses swayed and bowed gently, as if someone were passing by.  The shadow, moving of its own accord, came and went with the movement of clouds across the sun.

     And in the darkness at the edge of the yard, where the wood began, a man stood, indistinct int he flickering sunlight that fell between the leaves.  He wore an odd costume:  a laced shirt with blowsy sleeves, a tunic-like vest, a short green cloak.  His hair was glossy black as a raven's wing, and held back from his think face by a crimson ribbon.  He stood so still that he seemed a part of the trees, of the forest;  a lean shadow in green and brown.  Sorrow was starkly evident in his green eyes.

     After a moment, the sound of a truck passing on the main road shattered the sleepy stillness of the early spring afternoon, and the yard was deserted once more...except for the shadow of a woman against the back wall of the old house.

     Waiting.

Steve Jobs

Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

My First Library

There is a little library in my home town.  It's a red brick building within walking distance of my childhood home and the house where I live now.  When I was a young child, my grandfather used to take me to the library and help me carry out my brown paper grocery bag full of books.  When I was older, I rode my purple bike to the library, or walked.  There's a an old metal mailbox outside the library's front entrance.  The mailbox is painted green and is now the book return.  The library's double doors are heavy, dark wood that a kid has to make an effort to wrestle open.  Then there's a step up into the library, and the overwhelming smell of old books...a combination of mustiness and dust.  There is a wooden circulation desk with an office behind it, one librarian, three rooms of adult books, and one room of children's and young adult books.  When I was a child, they did not use the term "young adult".  If it wasn't a picture book, it was classified as "juvenile".

My high school friend, who now lives across the street from me, came over today and asked if I'd like to walk to the library with her and her young daughter.  I hadn't been to the library since I came back home.  I was afraid to go back because surely, it would all be different, all new, all perfect, and my beloved musty library with its shabby old Nancy Drew books would just be a memory.

But I walked in, and it was exactly the same.  I smelled library as soon as we walked through the doors.  I went straight to the children's/juvenile room and got down on my knees and there were my Nancy Drew books.  I took them off the shelf, one after the other, and found my name written on the date due cards in the back, with stamped dates from twenty-five years ago.

And magically, they were having a book sale, and if your name was on the date due card, you got the book for half off.  Unfortunately, the Nancy Drew books weren't for sale, but I did manage to find three books that I checked out all those years ago:

I went to the library so much that I didn't even have to write my last name.  Apparently, so did Jessica.

I signed up for a new library card but didn't actually get a card.  They're still using the same card catalogue version of filing.  The librarian said she just had to remember that I "had a card".

Some things never change, thank God.