Not that long ago, I was a librarian, and my life was all about books. My first 4 years or so on island I served as a library aide and assistant librarian for the Grace Sherwood Library. I absolutely loved this job! I even had a “library baby” for awhile after my first child was born. My supervisor, the head librarian, allowed me to bring him to work with me in the mornings when we were closed, and he would hang out with the books and us while we chatted and worked. Since he was still under a year old, he slept a lot, so I brought a special napping blanket that folded wrapped up into itself and made a carry bag and laid him down between the stacks where he slept in the quiet surrounded by books. I have a picture of the two of us from the local newspaper (The Hourglass) helping take books off the shelves to pack them up for a renovation of the library when he was just old enough to sit up and crawl around. I still remember those days as absolutely magical combining the wonder of raising my first child with my first love as a child, reading and surrounding myself with books.
Later on, I had the privilege of serving as the head librarian, although it was short lived (only about 3 months) before the position was cut entirely, and the library went to volunteer staffing only. After I settled into my new position in education, I eventually began to “neglect” my little hometown library which was like a second home to me for my first few tenuous years on the atoll. Now, I hardly ever take or have the time to visit my old stomping grounds, but today my son and I had a reason to go, and I found myself very excited about helping him search for a book for school at what is most likely the only public library on Kwajalein Atoll. Unfortunately, we didn’t find exactly what we were looking for, which was some of my favorite realistic fiction adventure novels by Gary Paulsen that my son is now old enough to enjoy too. I know we used to have these, but they have probably been taken out of circulation because many of them were old paperbacks, and there’s not enough room or library budget money to keep everything in circulation that they’ve accumulated over the years from local donations or better yet to replace the aging books. This is so sad to me, but once again, it’s all part of life on a shrinking atoll. Don’t get me wrong, the men and women who now take care of the library do a wonderful job with what they have to work with. It’s clean, comfortable, and there’s no shortage of fantastic books to choose from, but it’s one of those activities that the command found “dispensable” to a certain extent, back in 2007 when they transitioned it from a funded library to a volunteer facility. Reading
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