I’ve been coming here to focus on myself. Walking through the doors to the library has become a way of mentally distancing myself from the angst of finding somewhere new to live.
Here, my notifications are muted and without any reminders of my current living situation around me, I forget about it for a few hours at least. I find the headspace to write.
I go to the same café, order the same coffee from the same cheerful waitress, and then sit in the same seat by the window. A few figures feel familiar to me now. They’re regular library visitors who, like me, set up and stay for the day. I know their faces, voices and, through glimpses of print outs and snippets of overheard conversation, I know what they’re focussing on: Course work, photography, applications.
I noticed when there were new faces last week. An elderly lady in her seventies with a smoker’s cough and a younger one in her late twenties were busy decorating the Christmas tree at the entrance of the library. They put their shoe box of knitted pom poms, angels, bells and stars at the end of my desk and kept coming back to it to pick up another decoration to hang.
I had to take a call which disturbed my focus that day. It’s OK to take quiet phone calls at certain times in certain areas of this library so I stayed at my desk. It was someone from the HR team at work enquiring about how much annual leave I’d taken this year. Too much was the upshot.
She asked me to take her through every day I’d booked off over the past year to make sure it wasn't an error. She was being fair. A 32-year-old can surely cope with this level of enquiry over annual leave dates. But going through them all in such an orderly fashion was harder than it should have been.
I flicked back through my diary, checking the scribbles I’d made by each of the dates she read out. I’d drawn little doodles next to some them - a flower, a sun, a bucket and spade. To her, they were a list of dates. To me, they tell a condensed version of a difficult year. Holidays I’d been on with my ex followed by time I’d had to take off to deal with the breakup and subsequent house move. By the time I hung up, there were tears and I couldn’t stop them.
I panicked then, when I put my phone down. I’d zoned out while I was on the phone and now I was back in the library, paranoid about what my library companions had overheard.
I lowered my head and got back to drafting sentences, glancing occasionally at the unlikely pair decorating the tree. Outwardly they didn’t have much in common, but they moved around each other with such ease. There was a clear hierarchy, the elderly lady directing the younger one on where to hang each knitted decoration – but they laughed together too.
When the younger one came back to my desk to pick another tree decoration, she leant over to me.
“What’s your name?” she asked. I told her and asked hers in return. She was Anita.
“We might need your help to reach the top branches – do you mind?”
I got up and helped her and Sharon, the older lady, to decorate the top branches of the tree, following Sharon’s clear vision and direction.
They’d made the knitted decorations in the library knitting group they’re both part of. They knit baby grows for premature babies at the local hospital and post box toppers too.
Neither of them mentioned the phone call but when Anita disappeared to hang up the knitted bunting on the stairs, Sharon turned to me and said:
“Anita… she’s been through hell and back. I’ve been trying to include her and her daughter in what I can…”
She was cut short by Anita’s return. I didn’t really need details to understand how they’d become so close. Just like Anita didn’t need details to understand that on that day, it was a good idea to invite me to get up and join in.
When they left, they gifted me a knitted bell. There were too many to fit on the tree. I got an invite to join their knitting group on a Tuesday morning too. I haven’t been because I can’t knit and it’s during work hours but I wave at them through the glass door.
Soon, I won’t be lodging with my friend or visiting this library anymore. I won’t be in touch with Anita or Sharon or any of the other faces that have become familiar. But I like that I came here seeking solitude and focus and found perspective and connection too.
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Really enjoyed this Alice. This reminded me so much of the way things are done here in Sardinia and the way people naturally reach out to forge connections with one another.
Loved this read, Alice :)