Tale of Woe

Once upon a Saturday, we set off on an adventure.  I had recently discovered a library in a town an hour away (everything is an hour away from here.  It's weird, like we've got a one-hour radius in every direction and then - *poof!* - civilization!) that serves everyone on the reservation.  Yes, that includes me!  In exchange for a short application, proof of ID, and proof of residence, I could have access to a library at least three or four or five times the size of the one that sits just below to mesa here.  I guess that's still relatively small, but can you see how excited I was?  And with good reason, too.

Well, we packed ourselves into the car and rode off.  Ben read to me as I drove and all the while, I daydreamed of all those books, packed neatly onto row after row of shelves.  Fiction, non-fiction, picture books, children's literature, and of course the Native American Collection.  I felt that I was about to be admitted into a new and yet familiar world that was not confined to my little neighborhood on the mesa, to a big, blue sky speckled with crows, or to my daily routine of home-post office-library-home.  Oh, can you imagine how lovely that thought was?  Lovely.  Very.

As we drove into town, turned right and then left, parked, and approached the door, beyond which waited the museum and library, I was all anticipation.  With Ben along to watch Addie, I would be free to browse contentedly, without worrying about the little hands that are always so eager to remove books by the handful.  The door was unlocked.  We had done our best to find out the library hours.  They weren't posted anywhere obvious online, but Ben had found a slightly aged page on the website that reasonably reassured us that we would find the place open.

To the left, the museum had little traffic.  We headed to the right, to the glass doors that stood between us and the books.  They were closed.  The space beyond them was dark.  The hours were posted on the door - open Monday through Friday.  Closed Saturdays.

I know I'm being a little melodramatic here, but...closed Saturdays?  What else are Saturdays for, but to go to the library?  To sit on the floor among the shelves and browse among the books?  To take in the delicious scent of delicious words?  (Yes, I've always had a thing for smelling books.  Something about the inky, papery smell of the pages and the binding...  Anyway, so now you know.)

And there you have my tale of woe, and a little bit of what's been going on in my life.  Don't worry, though.  It's not all bad.  I'll try to post something more positive tomorrow.