The Bixby

"The Bixby" is the library I grew up with. It's perched on a hill, with a stained glass dome ceiling, ionic columns, and rails with green-brown patina. I often left The Bixby with a stack of books so high I could rest my chin on them. Stunning and small, it's my original library, the one I would compare all other libraries to.

There are certain things about growing up in Vermont where you think life is like that. That libraries and churches are beautiful and old, that tomatoes and corn come straight from the ground, that silence is full and good, and lipstick a bit suspect.

That seasons are distinct and fierce and on fire with ice or wildflowers, that if you work hard enough and wait long enough sweetness can come from trees, and that when you only get three channels on your TV and there's nothing on, you turn it off.

It was through books that I first discovered that life was not necessarily like that. That it could also be a myriad of other possible things. That some people grew up with a yard made of pavement, a house made of mud, or a TV that never turned off.

Like the wooden angel that fell to me to symbolize real angels, books were the door made of paper I could feel in my hands, opening up to worlds I hadn't thought to think of.