Well, Labor Day Weekend 2018 is behind us. It’s Tuesday, fake Monday, morning and I’m at the St. Agnes Upper West Side Branch of the New York Public Library. Time to get back to business. Like the rest of the city. Except I had actually envisioned spending the bulk of the holiday making serious progress on the memoir I’m writing. The goal of working on Labor Day Weekend seemed apt, since my story about teaching Hamlet as my father died is truly a labor of love, and since I’ve carved out the month of September to finish this rewrite, so I might as well get started.
First tip: If you want to write on a holiday weekend, do not go on social media. Just don’t. I’m pretty good at making time to do fun stuff, so FOMO is usually not a problem for me. Plus, having worked in the hospitality industry for years, I’m used to working when other people are playing: and vice versa. But seriously, if you’re not on the beach or at the lake over Labor Day Weekend, keep your distance from all the people who are posting that they are surfing, grilling, and water skiing.
Second tip: Be at the beach or the lake on Labor Day Weekend. Especially if there’s going to be a heat wave. You can always sequester yourself at the local public library (though not on Sunday or Monday) or a coffee shop and write. And that way you still have the mornings and evenings to get in the water.
Third tip: If you can’t be at the beach or lake, be in the city. Especially if you usually find cities too hectic and crowded. You will have the streets, parks, restaurants, museums, and movie theaters to yourself, and it’s pretty easy to find free street parking, too.
But back to libraries. As a writer and English teacher you wouldn’t think I needed to be reminded that Libraries Rock, as the posters and bookmarks in the Children’s Sections proclaim. But this summer, in a desperate ploy to be at the beach and get full days of writing in, I set up camp from 9 am – 5 pm at the Long Beach Island Public Library in Surf City, NJ. With parents who have always been big readers, I knew that libraries in South Florida were community centers, places “you can buy perfectly good books for a dollar!” and rent books on tape and movies for free. As a university student I sought refuge and focus in libraries. Yet I’m embarrassed to say that at 52 years old I’m just remembering that public libraries are also wonderful places to work.
Here I am in the library, writing about grief. Your first experience of losing a beloved opens your eyes to truths about the human experience that have been hiding out in the open all your life. And the loss of a beloved parent, all the more so. Those first few months after my father died I’d find myself sitting in a public space, looking around at the people, and thinking, wow, at least half of these people have already gone through this. Or are going through it now. And they hardly show it. Why didn’t anyone tell me? That’s when the sayings “Be kind, you never know what someone is going through,” “Most men live lives of quiet desperation,” and “You don’t know what you don’t know,” started to take on profound resonance.
Likewise, working in libraries in the tri-state area this summer has made me conscious of how many different types of people who are using the local public library on any given day, and how very important these libraries are. You see retirees, yes, but also children getting excited about taking out their own books, people reading physical newspapers, using the library computers, searching for jobs, working on their resumes, studying for tests, finding relief from the weather, taking free creative writing, mediation, or tech support classes, and renting books on CD for their next road trip or house cleaning bout.
Just as all the business, protocol and rituals around death recede into the “I don’t have to think about that” section of my conscious mind when no one is dying or has died recently, so too has the public library system been out of my use and far from my thoughts. Now I’m so grateful for the people who’ve been laboring consistently through the generations to keep these institutions alive and vibrant. Now I worry that the neglect that public libraries have suffered in my mind is indicative of a national at-risk status. Now I’m privately embarrassed that I didn’t give them more credit or respect.
I’ve hear it said that the more you loved, the more you will grieve. And hopefully the more you’ll appreciate. Even if it is in retrospect.
So, if you’re looking for me this September, I’ll be in the library, where there are no kitchens, snacks, beds, or domestic chores to distract my attention from the work at hand. Wish me luck, because writing about grief–and facing the shame and remorse of not having spent more time with my good dad when I had a chance–is really painful.
Oh, and that’s another thing good about libraries as places to write. It’s totally awkward to just burst into tears in the library, so it’s a little easier not to become immobilized by the waves of grief when they hit.
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