Well the entries are getting closer together. The goal for next week is another entry. Or I may have three this weekend and the dam will have broken (I wrote that ‘damn’ which is indicative of my feelings without structured creativity).
This actually occurred on my way out of the library after my last entry. I’ve been trying to catch the time to write about it since then. But school started, and there is/was an uproar at the Bean’s school (one she will not be at next year unless things improve) and I started a structured fitness program *with* a trainer (that is the only way I’m going to get anywhere) Carl was hospitalized again and we’re having windows put in the house. I think there are a few other things in there too, but that is all I can recall at the moment.
As I was checking my books out last time, a young gentleman stepped up to help me, since the other 3 librarians were busy. He checked out my books and stopped on The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove, which was in a sad state, the binding coming away. As he pointed out the problems with the book, letting me know it would need to be turned in for repair, I noticed his name tag, hanging on a lanyard around his neck. The name was unmistakable, one I won’t use here, until I ask him. Suffice it to say it names a Shakespearian character, a beloved cat and (to my way of thinking) a 7 year old boy.
This was that boy, now a gentleman librarian. I asked him if he had a brother named C and he said yes. I said I used to baby-sit you and tell you stories about the moon lady His face actually lit up as he said “Jill?” I felt as if I suddenly lifted off the ground.
How I had loved and worried over those two little boys. I don’t know if he ever knew that I didn’t take any money for babysitting them. Our mothers were friends and I just immediately fell in love with them. And felt for them. We shared more than we ever told each other, more than I’ll say here. I took them to the park and we played on the castle. I told them stories and took them for walks. I promised them that I was the Moon Lady, always looking after them from the sky. If they were scared or worried, they could always look at the moon and tell me. I’d hear and send them my love.
It was all I could think of to do;I guess I was about 19. My time with them was always bittersweet. We three were stealing a few hours away from the things that worried and scared us. I was able to indulge in magic for a time and they seemed to know they had a friend who loved them. Whenever I’ve doubted myself, memories of those times have been a touchstone.
And he reminded me, some 22 or so years later, as we stood at the library counter, that at first he didn’t believe I was the Moon Lady. Until i proved it by eating ‘moon food,” food only someone from the moon would eat. A bouillon cube.
He remembered too. He did.
I looked at him and held back the happy tears I could feel and told him “those were some very happy memories for me, some of the happiest I had in Fayetteville,” he said, “me too.”
I did cry later for stories of the moon, for beautiful boys now grown to gentlemen librarians.
Location: Fayetteville Public Library
