Isn’t it funny how you never see the last time coming?
Another year is 3 months in and the same flow of seasons comes and goes. Yet each season is a little different as we all get older.
This January marked a departure of a dear person in our lives. Our favorite librarian, Miss Beth.
Miss Beth was always a smiling face behind her desk, a kind word, a laugh and a helper when the kiddos were searching for just the right book. She was the reason the library stocked so many pirate books (when Gus had a voracious appetite for them).
As a child, and now a grown up, I have always sought refuge in books. I love to read new books and to re-read the old, treasured ones again and again. This might explain why from the time the boys were itty bitty I have made a weekly library trip one of our habits in life.
When we moved to our little town and I didn’t know many people and the boys had just turned 2, my first agenda besides unpacking was to seek out a new refuge at the library. It has been a steadfast friend during all our years of changes, and Miss Beth one of the most constant faces throughout.
The baby is now 6. I would bring her in her carrier to get a quiet hour at the library for the boys to play trains or magnets. Bug had time to browse and as they grew, they all attended the weekly story time with Miss Beth. Other librarians came and went but she was the force that brought joy to so many children’s lives, including mine. We attended her farewell party; we were so happy she was moving to be with her daughter on the East coast but also sad for our loss. I knew the library was searching for a new children’s librarian, but I couldn’t quite picture anyone else.
Then, one day we ventured out to story time again (mostly for the youngest as the oldest all now do their own thing) and the new children’s librarian there. We sat, we sang, we listened to the story. I watched my kindergartner as she nonchalantly joined in and then decided she would rather go find books on her own. And that was that.
The last story time.
I didn’t take it in until later that day. She had always known Miss Beth, smiled up at her as she crawled around the floors, toddled over for hugs and hello when she started walking. She learned to greet her with a “Hi Miss Beth!” when we walked into the library each week. Now, here was this stranger, leading a story time that wasn’t as she knew it, and it just didn’t call to her as it once did.
And that was that.
We haven’t attended any more since then, and I have realized that that time of my life is over as a parent. We still go each week and check out books and play on tablets and sometimes we even get the toys out, but never again will my children sit crisscross on the bright alphabet carpet, looking up with rapt faces as Miss Beth reads them a story or leads them in song.
We cannot live in grief, in constant nostalgia, but oh I let myself be there for a time. Then life and children call you to be present and busy and it slips away, until the next thing you know, it’s the last time you remember them asking you to read a book or teach them something new.
I’m facing forward now, aware that being a parent requires a lot of being in the moments that we are given, of not wasting opportunity when we have it.
Because we never know when it becomes the last memory.
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