My Library Card

When I was a kid (which is weird for me to say because I'm still in denial about not being a kid), I loved the summer. I mean, what kid didn't? I loved the feeling of riding in our family van, sliding my flip-flops off and feeling the air conditioning on my toes. I loved going to the pool for swim lessons. I loved riding my bike all over my backyard. I loved jumping through the sprinkler.

But I especially loved the reading.

It was a rite of passage in my family to get our very own library card when we turned 5. I still have that card, with a sticker from every single summer reading program and the signature worn thin for the third time in the card's life. I used the number as my password for all of my accounts for years. I took it with me to Philadelphia for college, despite being around 2800 miles away from the nearest branch. That card is one of my most valued possessions.

My summer passport to the world

And I suppose it's because of the memories. Memories, not just of the wall of air conditioning that signaled entering the library, not just of searching for books and placing holds (our library was one of a pretty decent-sized chain, so I could almost always count on one of the branches having the books I wanted), not just getting to know the librarians through checking out books when I was young and volunteering at the library as I got older, not just growing out of the kids section into the young adult and finally into the fiction section: no, not just all that. I think the majority of my memories that are tied with my library card are not of the library itself. My memories are of the places that I took the books and the places the books took me.

It's the smell of chlorine, waiting for my brother to finish jumping off the high board after swim lessons. It's the feeling of air conditioning on my de-flip-flopped toes. It's driving to California for family vacations (to this day, I calculate travel time in potential read pages). It's being curled up in the cool, dark living room, hiding from the blazing heat of an August afternoon with my nose in a book.

9-year-old Kath in her natural habitat

But it's also the memories of crawling through the wardrobe with Lucy, moving the pencil with Matilda, flying to a mountain with Gwinna, stepping through the looking glass with Alice, finding the Sorcerer's Stone in my pocket with Harry, wishing for puffed sleeves with Anne, defeating the rats with Mattimeo, all of the adventures I went on with all the characters between the covers of a paperback.

I don't just read books: I get immersed in them. That's why when I read, I literally block out the world - family and friends have to holler to pull me back out (literally). I could go on and on about how I feel about books.

A few weeks ago, my parents and my brother and I drove to California for my grandpa's 90th birthday. I always have so much fun hanging out with my extended family, but I might have had an equally enjoyable time with my 30 hours of minimally interrupted reading time.

Outside: this. Inside: my nose in a book.

Admittedly, my reading habits have changed over the years. Instead of wandering out of a library with 7 books that I'll read over the next 9 days (at most), I tend to read longer books, more often than not on my Kindle (though I do read a physical book here and there)

But I have to say, though my library card number has changed and my mode of reading is mostly electronic, I  will never be able to shake the nostalgia and joy that I get out of sitting on the couch on a warm summer afternoon and cracking open a brand-new-to-me library book.