A tale of two libraries

Today the city next to us was supposed to be having a celebration starting at 3 p.m.  We showed up at 3:15 and couldn't find hide nor hair of any sort of celebrating--and anyone who has stopped by my blog knows my family knows celebrating!  LOL

I used to spend a lot of our Saturdays in this "twin" city to mine.  My kids took swimming lessons there (our city has no facility for this other than a pricey country club.  I prefer a Y environment) Because of their lessons, I went to my banks branch in this city, and used this city's library.  For years.  Chet grew up spending more time at that library than the lovely one in our own community. 

Not because of convenience. You can walk to the library in our city from our home.  But our city is somewhat elitist.  You walk down town and you do not see homeless people.  Or as a general rule, disabled people.  Marginalized people in general are not common sights here.  Not so in the city next to us.  They have a highly visible street population and this population used their library extensively during the day.  When I went it was common to see folks with back packs and sleeping bags reading magazines or newspapers.  Or to have someone say thing that didn't make a lot of sense.  Or for someone to be a bit loud.

All that made the other city library a perfect fit for my family.  My eldest is not neurotypical.  To look at him, one doesn't know that he sees, interprets and experiences the world in a vastly different manner from most of us.  But he does.  So he sometimes says things that seem out of context or downright strange.  He is loud, and gestures wildly with his hands when he gets excited. 

But the staff at the other library were used to pegs that were not all the same and Chet was not a problem.  He grew up there and the lovely children's librarian watched him grow to adulthood and as my other 3 children came along, she helped shepherd them along the path of literature with the same kind, gentle demeanor.  Rob and KC also took to her and loved seeing her each Saturday after swimming lessons.

Then budget cuts forced drastic cuts for that city library. They are only open a couple days a week and they are weekdays, not Saturdays.  I had to resort to going to the beautiful new library in my city.  Which has lots of books.  And the librarians are all really friendly.  Except that my eldest can't really go there.  He gets upset because it is so big, so vast that he becomes overwhelmed.  His loudness is very much at odds with the expectations in this city library.  When he did go, I received carefully worded complaints from staff about how he monopolized staff time, was disruptive, etc.  Explaining Chet's disability did little.  There were nods and all, but still an expectation that he would comply "normally."

Today, because I only worked a half day, the other library was open.  I hadn't known it would be, or I would have brought Chet along.  As it was, KC got to see his beloved librarian friend, who he remembered and who remembered both he and Elisabeth and the rest of my brood.  She and I spoke at length about the different feeling in the two libraries and how sad I was over the fate of her library and the loss it represented most particularly for my eldest son. She said how much she genuinely liked Chet and how she missed seeing him. She remembered that he always brought her a plethora of magazines which she would read herself and then offer for free to other patrons.

The world is not sunlight and sweet music when you have a child (or in my case a man-child) who hears a different symphony from the one the rest of the world listens to.  I mourn that for my son, but I also celebrate that today I reconnected with someone who was able to see the essential goodness within him.