Reminsicin' part 3

During a very peculiar time in my life, a time that was also extrodinarily cold, my mother and youngest sibling would walk to what felt like every library in St. Louis. On dreary, miserable days in our house we would escape the ice inside and venture down Page avenue to the various libraries. My younger sister and I would walk on either side of my mother, looking her in the face. Watching for any signs of greif, but none came. Even though her eyes were heavy, her voice shaky; she managed to joke, play around and entertain us with stories as we made our way to our destination. My mother never seemed to get too tired to journey with us. She never once rushed us even though we left well past dusk sometimes and she had to be up before the sunrise to get us and herself ready for school/work the next morning. Once we got into the heat of the building we would take off our layers of clothes, worries, and problems, lay them on a table and roam around the books, computers and different rooms. She sat patiently with her head in her hands making sure we weren’t destroying anything all the while igniting something in me. The first time she told us we were about to walk to the library, I wasn’t too thrilled to go, especially since we had to walk, but I was happy to get out of the house. But as the trips became more frequent I began to look forward to them. Among those books, I ventured everywhere. I was a San Fernando valley princess, a wizard, a ninja, a WWII veteran or even a slave. There in the St. Louis Public Library I learned the power of words. How these people had managed to escape the realities of their lives through the stories they told. It was something powerful about being able to tell a story. Being able to create your own ending, your own histories and myths. I loved going to the library. We escaped our present and journeyed into distant lands that took about 45 minutes on foot. We would check books out and pile them in backpacks to be hauled home. There my mama, even though we were well past the age of being read to, would read to us anyway. She encouraged us to read and create. She covered our ears and egos from harmful words, trying her best to protect us from emotional harm. And when she couldn’t get to us in time to shield us, she whispered words of encouragement to us and like a band aid to an open sore made it feel better. Our circumstances tried their best to make us feel like powerless, helpless girls. But my mama, like a fierce lioness killed the thief that attempted to take away our ability to be what and who we chose to be. I’ll never forget those walks as a young girl to the library. And as we got older, we would make the walk/bus ride, even when she became too tired to journey with us.