Please be advised the QMPL has been forced to close early today due to a bomb threat. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused and are thankful for assistant librarian Gerald Ames who kept a level head and evacuated the library quickly and thoroughly. Nobody was hurt and the Question Mark Police are investigating.
On happier fronts, I am trying to make sense of being a mother at this particular moment every single day. I miss the Question Mark Public Library very much but I’m very grateful for everyone’s book recommendations about early motherhood. My friend Violet comes by after school to hold Freddie for a half hour so I can answer work emails, but most days I read instead because even the idea of my inbox is upsetting. There’s so much happening at the library right now and I know Gerald needs help, but if I’m being very honest, I want to throw my laptop off the roof.
Some books that have been helpful are The Mother to Mother Postpartum Depression Support Book by Sandra Poulin; Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, by Marc Weissbluth, MD; and You Will Rock as a Dad by Alex Grace which someone sent to Bill while he was still here. I’ve been reading it in case there are things in the father books that aren’t in the mother books and I’ll have to cover that stuff, too. There’s so much to cover. There’s so much information. There’s so much to miss. There’s so much crying, in the world and my head and my house with this tiny perfect person so hungry and alive and gloriously here. She looks so much like her dad. Sometimes it’s too much. Sometimes I put the video monitor in my bathrobe pocket, go out the front door past the piles of casserole pans, out into the yard, barefoot and ice-toed in Midwest December, and I howl at the moon. I know that sounds strange, but it’s the only time that I really feel like myself. There are so many books about mothering—I’d argue that every book ever written is about motherhood; how we were nurtured or not, how we try and fail to love, to care, to teach, to grow—but the one that makes the most sense is a novel by Rachel Yoder called Nightbitch where the mother turns into a dog every night. She grows hair on the back of her neck. She can smell everything. She craves raw meat. If the whole point of literature is to make us feel less alone, this book is the truest thing I’ve ever read.
For more recommendations and more news about Freddie, please read my latest entry in the Librarian's Bookshelf.