Getting a library card at Hawaii Kai Public library was a big deal. It was how I knew I was going to be a big girl. A grown girl. To get one, I had to learn how to write my name clearly and neatly with equal spaces that fit on the dotted line. I had to write in pen too, so I couldn’t make any mistakes. In the evenings prior to our appointment at the library, I practiced with one of my mother’s ball point pens at the kitchen table. I traced my J slowly and shakily, trying to get it’s curve perfectly. I wrote a lopsided O and had to start again. When our appointment at the library finally came, I was given a sharpie to write my name. As my O turned into a defeated sideways oval, I felt my mothers hand over mine, guiding me over the top of the O, down the little A, N, another N, and finally one last little A. I looked up at the kind librarian to make sure that she had seen me do it, that it still counted even if Mom helped me. She smiled back down at me and proceeded to check out a picture book with my freshly minted library card. The librarian handed the card back to me and said, “congratulations,” as I put the card in a glitter encrusted wallet we had bought for the occasion. She said it like I had accomplished something really special.
It was the beginning of the summer when I first got my library card. My sister Claire and I were attending summer school at a different elementary school, Kamiloiki Elementary, because we had just moved into the Kalama Valley school district. During recess and lunch Claire picked me up at my classroom and we held hands all the way to the playground. We needed the reassurance from each others hands, a “yes I’m still here” promise as we entered the daunting and intense social pyramid of our new school. In the afternoons we walked across a series of soccer fields to get home and did homework until our mom finished her interviews and new stories for the day. The best afternoons were the ones we went to the library afterschool.
The library was a special place to me. It had rainbow linoleum tiles that led to the children’s book section and pungent smell of must and old books that lingered all the way into the parking lot. Inside there were koinobori fish flags that hung from the slanted ceilings with long tail strands that tickled the top of your head as you passed under it, fluttering from cold blasts of the air conditioner. Claire and I roamed each shelf of the children’s section, crawling on our knees and craning our necks to see each of the titles. My mom often lefts us there for hours at a time while she was working and the librarians would watch over us from behind the circulation desk. We’d do our homework and then curl up in one of the carrel desks to read a stack of books.
It continued in this way all summer and into the school year. The library became the middle space between school and home, between mom and teacher, between reading and entertainment. We waited for her till closing time, the lights glowing dimmer and dimmer until she could pick us up, 2pm stretching endlessly till 5, time stretching standstill as we tried to finish our homework. Always waiting for mom. If I think about sponsorship, I think about influence. Our family’s commitment to the library is how I remember our values, our passion for reading, to story-telling, community involvement, and social change.