As you might have gathered, I am spending a chunk of the summer at a teeny tiny cottage about 25 minutes away from the little town where I grew up. I’m having a sort of working vacation – writing in the morning, paddling and swimming in the afternoon, sitting on the teeny tiny deck watching the waves roll in.
It’s been good for my weary soul.
But a few weeks ago I had gone into town for supplies (pancake syrup and a coffee at Tim Horton’s, if you must know) and, having heard a rumour that The Kitchen Sink Sutra was on the shelf of the town library, I hatched a plan to sneak in, find their copy of it, secretly sign it and slip out undetected. Maybe take a picture of my book “in the wild” there on the shelf of a real library.
Sadly, the book wasn’t in but, happily, I ended up chatting with a lovely lady who turned out to be the Head of Public and Technical Services and she said, “If you’re here for the summer, is there any chance you could come and do a book talk and have a signing?” (And just to be clear, saying to an author ‘Would you like to talk about your book?’ is a little like saying to a five year old, ‘Hey, do you want another handful of candy?’)
But this was even bigger than that because here’s the thing – this library is part of my history.
I grew up just down the hill and a few hundred steps from the front door of this library. My grandmother was on the board of this library for something like twenty years and she took me there to get my first library card when I was six. We had a standing appointment, usually every other Thursday, when we’d go and she’d talk business with the librarians and I would wander through the place, slowly making my way through every shelf, filling my tote bag with as many volumes as I could cram in there: The Hardy Boys, Enid Blyton, The Bobbsey Twins, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Dickens, Margaret Atwood, Margaret Laurence, Robertson Davies, John Irving, Kurt Vonnegut, Stephen King, Sue Grafton – as I grew up my tastes changed, but I devoured those books and only occasionally ran up late fees.
The Penetanguishene Library is a totally different place now – years of fundraising and construction and optimism and hard work have turned it into something easily four times the size of the old library I knew and into a wonderful community hub. The afternoon I snuck in to try to find my book, people were reading newspapers, people were using the computers, kids were playing board games – it is a living, breathing place that is inviting and airy and even more beautiful than the library I first loved.
Last Friday afternoon, I went back to the Penetanguishene Public Library, my first and favourite library, to talk about my book The Kitchen Sink Sutra, and so many people came to listen and they laughed at my jokes and they clapped after I read and then they stood in line to buy a copy or two to get signed. And in a move that can only be described as “Peak Stafford Falls,” my friend Betty and my mom set out a table of baked goods and coffee that people could enjoy afterwards, to make it feel like maybe we’d all just been hanging out at the Second Chance Café with Julia and Nana and the gang. They even served the coffee in china cups, some of which my mom brought from home and which once belonged to my grandmother.
And because life was already pretty busy imitating art, the spot where I stood to talk about the book I’d written is almost exactly where the old circulation desk was – the very spot I’d signed my name when I was six to get my first library card.
The floor still creaks in that spot, so I knew I was home.
P.
P.S. Such gratitude and many thanks to Head of Public and Technical Services Janet Ryan, CEO Cyndy Cote and everybody who welcomed me to PPL. See you again for The Date Square Dharma, I hope!
What a great experience !!!
It was fantastic, Sue!