Eleanore Goes to the Library

Yesterday we took Eleanore and Charlie to the base library for the first time. I shouldn't say the "first time", since we had taken Eleanore a few years ago while she was still in car seat/diaper mode, but I feel like I can't really count that, since we didn't actually read any books to her. We just set her carseat down on the floor behind us while we used the computers to buy airline tickets home for a Christmas vacation. So, yesterday we took the kids to the base library for the first time.

I remember getting my very first library card. I remember the magic that it held. I remember how every story, every picture, every adventure in the entire place, could be mine, aaaalllll mine. With the single handed motion of handing the librarian my thin laminated green colored card, I could bring 7 new hardbound, or floppy back books home with me, lock myself in my bedroom, and scan the pages until my eyes couldn't blink anymore.

I was sad to hear that children at the base library don't need library cards. They use Mommy or Daddy's account. BOOOOO, I say. The volunteers at the desk looked taken back when I asked if they had supplies to make one by hand. I think I had to repeat myself multiples times, before just grabbing a business card, flipping it over, and writing "LIBRARY" and "ELEANORE SUE" in breaking black ink on the back.

Isn't a library card one of the stepping stones of childhood? Really though.

I had plans to come home and make her a better one. Maybe using pink construction paper and glitter, a rhinestone or two, and a soft puffy kitten sticker? But while we were in line at the commissary, Daddy reached into his wallet and pulled out a trick of his own. He had other plans. His old library card from a TDY assignment to South Dakota. How could I compete with a picture of an airplane? Anything that flies up in the sky, and anything that Daddy works on, beats a little bit of sparkly glitter, I hate to say it. I had a brief moment of sadness, but quickly recovered after seeing the excitement on her face.

She was excited about having a library card. It didn't matter who had given it to her, or whre it came from, it just mattered that she loved it. The reaction that I knew she needed to have in order to fill in that blank space that soon would close up on its own, but would be better off having never existed .