Adulting

As I continue to adult for over three decades, I have come to the conclusion that adulting is no fun. Unfortunately and realistically, I have been adulting since I was fourteen or fifteen years old. When one is poor one does not have the luxury of being a child for long. My parents were not good with money, so at a very early age I started working, primarily teaching younger kids for money. I was more financially responsible than both my parents, so I was given the job of managing household budget. When I think back on it, I realize how stressful it was, trying to balance our expenses including repaying debts that we had incurred to maintain our household and our status in society as middle class.

Once I fell in love, adulting became much more exciting. The stolen glances, the holding hands, the gorgeous smile of my boyfriend directed at me made my heart flutter. Marriage was an adventure. Parenthood was the busiest, most challenging, and most rewarding part of my adulthood. But then came financial decisions, savings, planning for future, what to do for our retirements, health concerns, aging parents who lived far away. Adulting became a lot more work. I don’t have a head for numbers. IRAs, Roth IRAs, CDs, 403Bs sound like harsh, alien words. I want to shut my ears. Truly. Yet, we have to make decisions 🙄. Save for our old age, pay for college, look for our last home. The worst part of adulting (mature adulting?) is losing our parents and other loved ones. We have reached that age where the generation who used to be our roof is slowly fading out. We are moving up to the roof – cycle of life.

But here is the best part. For me, the routine in our house growing up was something like this. Wake up, clean up and then study. My mother believed in the discipline of doing school work in freshly rested mind. Unless it was Durga puja or my birthday, there was no exception to this rule. After final examination though I was allowed to wake up and crack open a story book and read for pleasure. Ma still believed that if not school work, I should read when I wake up to continue the habit of reading/studying during break between classes. I still remember how I cherished those mornings. Honest confession? I was one of those kids who hid story books inside text books and read with unwavering attention. My mother beamed at my concentration as she passed by. This morning, as I opened my book to read with my morning coffee, I realized that this is the best part of being an adult. I know my responsibilities and make my own decisions. No more hiding books within text books. Of course, I have to go to work, I have to finish a few chores before I go. But nobody can stop me from indulging in my reading in the morning, or whenever I want. And nobody (but my conscience and glucose level) to frown upon me as I eat a chocolate bar that pair beautifully with a good book.

Adulting is not all bad.

Story of a book mark

What? You don’t think book marks have stories to tell? Think again. Over the years at the library, we have seen so many book marks or objects used as book marks that we can get a pretty good idea of the habits of the book mark user. Book marks (that we have found at our library, tucked within the pages of a book) range from ornately designed pieces of art to dental floss to used tissues (and everything in between). Yes, you read that right. We, library workers, wash our hands more frequently than perhaps you do so one of the most popular gifts that we give to each other is hand lotion to show some love to our rough, red. well washed and well sanitized hands. I am telling you, library work is not for the faint of heart 🙂 .

A friend gave me a hand embroidered book mark. She is a whiz at embroidery and anything she creates is beautiful. As I held the book mark in my hand, I decided this one will only go into books that I will love and cherish. I live in a world of books. I touch books through out my work day. I bring home an inordinate number of books too. So much so that I fear I have a problem of hoarding. Fortunately, I am also very conscientious so I never keep the books beyond their due date and diligently return them on time. As you can imagine, many of those books get returned unread. There are only finite number of waking hours and within those hours, I must work, eat, be present with family, do some mindless phone surfing and read. At this ripe old age, I have realized that life is too short to continue to read books that don’t hold my interest. I start a lot of books, read about 50 pages and then abandon them if they don’t keep me engaged. My beautiful book mark never goes into those abandoned books. I only use that particular book mark for books that I know I will finish. You can say, my piece of art book mark is my love language to the books that capture my heart. Authors have to earn that book mark in their books. Here is a short list of books that have earned this honor:

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery

How to Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair

Poverty, by America by Matthew Desmond

Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom by Ilyon Woo

Finally Seen by Kelly Yang

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride

Rough Sleepers by Tacy Kidder

Lady Tan’s Circle of Women by Lisa See

Not Quite Not White: Losing and Finding Race in America by Sharmila Sen

I find this book mark to be a perfect gift. My beautiful friend and colleague who embroidered it by hand knows my love for books. And her gift of love nestles within the pages where I lose myself and find myself too. This is one of those gifts, along with her love, that keeps on giving.

What is your idea of a perfect gift?

Masked kids

I used to be quite knowledgeable about popular characters in children’s literature when my kids were little. I had a book worm who liked to spend her waking hours at the library. While checking out books for her, I got to know popular books that children read. The second one, however, was not much of a reader except for Garfield and Asterix. I still kept up with picture books and read to him to instill interest. He was more interested in tumbling around and lining up his toy cars.

While working at children’s desk, I acquired knowledge of children’s literature through my young customers, my amazing and knowledgeable colleagues and of course Google. Still many characters and titles of books that the children enquired about were unfamiliar to me. Often, I had trouble even understanding them. The reasons I could not understand them were sometimes adorable pronunciations of very young customers due to missing front teeth or their discomfort at talking to an adult. Many of them had trouble looking at me while saying the title of the book they wanted. I often asked, “Could you say the title one more time for me, honey?” And while they did, I surreptitiously typed the words I could decipher in Google to get the full title, which I then typed in our catalog search to see if we owned the book.

The pandemic hit. We closed the library for many months and I did not keep up with the popular characters of children’s literature. For example, I did not know till yesterday that the Berenstain Bears now had a baby sister!!Now that we are open and our young customers are skipping in to the library, I face a unique challenge. Masks on them make them even more indecipherable for me. Just the other day, a little girl came up to me asking for several titles. A children’s instructor perhaps would have known exactly what she was looking for. First of all, her mask combined with her cute way of talking made it difficult for me to understand her and on top of that, the titles were all unfamiliar. The poor kid must have thought who was this ignorant grown up and why was she at a children’s desk. She was very patient with me as we worked together to find most of the books she was looking for.

Pandemic brought with it unique challenges. I am adding masked kids as one of them. 🤣🤣

Having said that, my heart truly sings to see the enthusiasm for books in children of all ages who come in dancing and skipping into the library and get instantly lost in the stacks to take home stories. Their joy gives me hope.