Christmas spirit runs rampant at local library

The Christmas Spirit will trample you for a discounted tv and run you flat for a parking space, so you have to watch out for it.

Lately, a caretaker for a young autistic man has gotten into the habit of bringing him to the library so she can read by herself in a corner and let him roam around for a few hours without having to pay any attention to him. This is normally fine, he's a nice guy and just paces back and forth across the length of the library, vocalizing a little bit and looking happy. On this day, though, she had been ignoring him for over an hour and he was starting to get agitated, walking faster and making noises that caused studying patrons to look uncomfortable. He needed something, and the woman was sitting with her back to him without budging. Our new student workers are barely 14 and scared of everything - including work - so instead of being out in the aisles shelving books they were using this escalation as an excuse to hide in the office and bother my coworker. I was getting annoyed that the young man was being ignored and that our student helpers thought I couldn’t find work for them to do in the back room, so I went into the aisles to check the shelves and interrupt the woman’s reading a little bit. The young man started following me, pacing the aisle I was in and brushing up against me every time he went by. That's fine, if he needs company and it keeps him in one area, I'm okay with my butt getting brushed every few seconds. I did wonder if it had less to do with having company and more to do with me having a butt (it doesn't matter that I'm twice their age, if a person is feeling the call of the Horn they will rub up on a tree stump), but my sexual harassment meter has been broken by 20 years of public service - if I don't feel in danger, I don't really give a shit. If you bother my staff, though, I will throw hands. I pulled a pile of old damaged books to weed and dumped them in the back room for my coworker to make the student workers process. When one of my favorite library kids came in (Loki the Biter, my toddler time menace who is now a 6th grader), I left the aisles to help check out his books and chat with him about the first season of Stranger Things, and the young man went back to walking the length of the library, quieter and happier again. 

One of our regulars, who was sitting at the ADA computer, is an older woman who has been writing her memoirs for the past few years. Annie looks like a really old mall-Santa's elf, with limp bleached hair, a worn-out pink unicorn snuggie, and bright sparkly manicured nails. She's kind-hearted, has a quiet voice, loves God, and writes profanity-laced life stories about drugs and porn. I care about her a lot, even though she's emotional, refuses to wear her hearing aid, and constantly needs help with minor computer problems (eg: opening more than one tab and thinking all her work had vanished). While I was helping my library kid, Annie got up and walked over to wave down someone in the back office to help her. They were busy with the pile of books I had dropped on them, and didn't notice her until she called out, "Eenie meenie miney mo!" and pointed at one of them. When I looked over, one of the student workers was walking awkwardly to the computers to see what she needed. Unfortunately, he's a tablet baby who doesn't know how to use a real computer, so she was getting impatient with him. I needed to intervene, so I started wrapping things up with Loki and stamped his items. At that moment my coworker came out to put a stack of discarded books next to me, and Annie charged up and pointed a shaking finger at her right over my shoulder, crying angrily that she was mean and pretended not to see her so she wouldn't have to help her and she never shares anything about her life. Well, what did I just say about people bothering my staff? I might be crap at dealing with angry tradwives complaining about gay unicorn picture books, but I am very good at identifying and dealing with activated trauma. You have to get close to their face, make yourself the target, rephrase their needs, affirm that you care about them, and give clear firm instructions on what's going to happen next. Sometimes they need to be gently touched or hugged. Because she's mostly deaf, I snapped my fingers in her face to get her attention. "ANNIE. NO. I GAVE HER WORK TO DO. IT'S MY JOB TO HELP YOU. COME HERE. LET'S FIX THIS. NO, STOP THAT, WE CARE ABOUT YOU A LOT. NO, I TOLD THE STUDENTS NOT TO TALK TO PATRONS, HE THOUGHT HE WAS GOING TO GET IN TROUBLE WITH ME. NO, IT'S NOT SAFE FOR THEM, THEY'RE ONLY 14. I'M HERE NOW, SHOW ME." Loki watched me steer her away by the shoulders, looked up at the young man flapping past him, bobbed his eyebrows at me in a way that said, another day at the library, and waved goodbye. I nodded at him. 

By the time the library closed 20 minutes later, I was buzzing with nervous energy and had locked my phone into the building. I didn't go back to get it. Annie needed a big pile of copies of her story printed out for the writer's group the next day, and she had dropped a page on her way out. I picked it up and saw her daughter's name, and it all clicked into place. The theme for this month's writer's group was "Christmas Memories". Her daughter was born just after Christmas, in early January of 1980. She had killed herself right before Christmas in 2018. Annie had tried to follow her. She had been writing about it all day, and those feelings were riding right up on the surface for her. People go on the attack when their body is trying to hold itself together. I've seen a lot of it. I've done it, too.

The next day, Annie was still raw and sensitive, but she quietly came up to me and gave me a long hug before leaving. I really do care about her a lot. It seems like the bigger a pain in my ass someone is, the more I see them and love them.

Be patient out there when the Christmas Spirit cuts in front of you at Costco or runs over your foot with a cart. Pain does bad things to good people.

- - - 

The arm-long checklist is getting shorter, one checked box at a time. The stress of the past few months has had me riding the snake with slowly creeping increases of caffeine and sleeping aids, at the expense of my short term memory and resting heart rate, so I dropped it all this week. Returning my central nervous systems to factory settings; I need to be sharp when tire hits the ice in a few weeks. The blaring headache subsided after a few days, my body figured out how to stay asleep on its own again, and my memory has been clearing up. I can remember all my dreams again every morning, which has been a mixed bag. I dream about losing grasp of my kid in a crowd, running into someone I used to love and feeling my heart stop, getting lost in a warren of dilapidated rooms and staircases. Still, it's better knowing what my subconscious is chewing on. Fear, loneliness, loss.

But you know what? At the end of the dream, I stepped out into a cold sunny day on a street in St John’s, looked around and saw my kid safe and sound, and felt like I had all the time in the world to do whatever it was I wanted. I think it’s going to be ok.

Edited the end of this post because I was feeling for Annie while writing it, and then the sunny feeling kept coming back throughout the day. It feels like the beginning of the good kind of excitement, and it’s been a long time coming.

Hang in there everyone.