dinner in the bookstacks

around 6pm every evening, in old wing of the library, F - H section of the periodicals, the weeknight scent of chicken-n-dumplins, homemade spaghetti, or maybe leftover chili meanders along the dusty stacks of magazines and literary journals.

bryan works every evening at the library, at the center checkout desk, managing student workers, answering questions, but mostly vigilantly keeping the library from nighttime strangeness (and he does have stories--libraries become very strange at night--or at least the people that visit them at night are strange).

this semester we've made it a family habit for me to put dinner in tupperware and head up to campus, girls in tow, for dinner as a family in the bookstacks. there's a little table close to his desk, nestled between shelves. zu sits in her own chair, propped up tall enough with the help of a few legal volumes no one (we assume) ever reads.

this has been sweet family time for us. sometimes we do get a few puzzled glances from the occasional student passing by, but we've just been doing our own thing with our family schedule and dinner in the bookstacks is what works for us.

as we've grown as a family, we tend to make-do, and in the making-do find our own happy way of things. i love gathering around the table together, even if it means a little bit of dishwashing in the library breakroom (where they use a cardcatalog to store coffee filters and silverware) or letting a little blonde two year old run and giggle through the quiet and stodgy library.

“In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.”
- Mark Twain