very

 

What does a very, very long bulletin board in the children's section of the library need?

A very, very long list of characters to fill it from one end to the other.

I started in the centre, cutting my characters from discarded book pages. 

A knight on horseback.  

A fearsome fire-breathing dragon. 

A bridge to nowhere.

Then I added to the left and right, left and right until the space was spanned.

A towering, flag festooned fortress.

A wizard and his wise owl. 

A leaping wolf and prancing unicorn. 

Puss’n boots. 

Mary Poppins and Alladin’s carpet on a collision course with a crescent moon. 

A prince and princess.

These all became a back story to the action up front.

Black silhouettes of a cottage, dimly lit. 

A maiden between a mushroom and a gnome. 

Peter Pan and Wendy aloft. 

The tortoise and the hare. 

A swan watching a mermaid dive and fish leap. 

A dancing frog and fairies three.

 A reader (of course). 

A trio of children. 

A maiden in a tower. 

A mysterious mouse, and birds of every kind flying high and low and left and right and up and down.

(The blue background paper had been around the block a few times and there were signs galore of tape doing what tape does best. The placement of more than a few characters helped to hide the past life of what was now, blue sky) 

Re-use, Re-think, Re-tape.

my favourites

I haven't really stopped to think about self-image lately.
About how I see myself.
I did learn how someone else sees me though.
Today, in the library.
Beside the magazine rack.
A very little boy made his way through a forest of legs until he was beside me and called back to his father.
"I want THAT Christmas book. The one by the Grandma."
A question mark formed over my head.
The Christmas book was really a foodie magazine with a frosted Christmas cookie on the cover and the father and son were soon snuggled in an arm chair, 'reading' it together.
The question mark followed me home though, and I have pulled it out and looked it over a few times this evening.
I am a grandma.
A real life grandma.
And I love being a grandma.
Mind you I'm a very, very young one, right?
Now, it's not that I mind aging.
It's just that I saw myself as a person of no particular age.
I think that's it.
I saw myself as me.
The girl who became a woman.
But I guess I am the girl who became a grandmother.
And I celebrate that.
But there is still a feeling there.
An important feeling.
We are much more than how we are perceived by others.
I was never just a child or a teen or a mom or a grandma.
Those names are just titles.
I was who I would become and am who I was all rolled together.
Looks can be deceiving, but in this case the child spoke truth as children do so well, and as titles go, grandma is one of my favourites.

no limit

Know your limit, collect within it.
Library book sales are such a temptation to the weak.
I was just going to look,
and then,
I was just going to buy the one small book for my grandson. The title was Vancouver Canucks for goodness sakes.
Of course, I felt I really must pick up the three out of print George MacDonald's for my Dad.
Mary Had A Little Lamb had illustrations that would make a quilter weep for joy, created with fabric and wool and embroidery. It couldn't be left behind either.
Christmas with Rosamunde Pilcher was an amazing find. It contained a short story that broke my heart with it's beauty. I have already imagined its sequel.
Oh the power of words,
the joy,
the comfort.
Books really can take on a life of their own. Like companions or wise old friends.
Now how can you limit that.

the long and the short of it

We recently moved our bookshelves and books into one room, gathering them together to form a library. I couldn't help noticing that short stories are my preferred genre. Shelves bulge with them, and I tend to collect everything written by my favorite authors. Isn't it sad when you've read everything someone has to say and there is no more to be found? I suppose that's why I find myself reading and rereading some authors works. I suppose the relationship of reader and author is not unlike other relationships in that we always long to know and to be known. We come to know not only about the author through his work, but about ourselves, and those kinds of discoveries are worth collecting.

Zane is Grey!

You've almost reached your limit, the librarian said kindly. Are you returning any books today? My limit?! How could I have sixty books out already. Mind you, I had staggered out to the car with a slipping, sliding stack several times in the last few weeks, but limiting out at the library!! I always have a joyous sense of limitless choices awaiting me when I step through those doors.
In the 1920's and early 30's my Father was growing up in Drumheller and he remembers library cards costing ten cents. You could fill both sides with stamps before you had to buy another and he eventually read the entire children's side of the library. He yearned to read Zane Grey but alas, Zane Grey was on the adult side of the library and therefore, unattainable. This past year, almost eighty years later, he is working his way through a friends huge Zane Grey collection. More than sixty titles....no cards to stamp, no limits.