Last Friday was my first day out after being stuck at home for a week with Covid. I was buzzing around, trying to make up for lost time. I cut through a city parkade to save some time, determined to be efficient. In my peripheral vision, I noticed three young men off to the side of the doorway I was aiming for - it was only mid-morning but it appeared they were already under the influence of something intense. I kept my head down and aimed for the door, but sensed that one of the men had begun staggering somewhat towards me.
“Heyyyy” he said slowly, and I felt my heart rate begin to accelerate, but looked up to meet his blurry gaze. There was a brief pause, and then a friendly exclamation: “… You work at the library!”
He seemed pleased to see me, to have identified me. (It seemed almost like the same sort of satisfaction I feel when I spot a waterfowl out on the water and know the name. “Look! A lesser scaup!” I’ll announce to anyone within earshot.) My heart rate immediately calmed, and I smiled at him. “Yes I do!”, I said, and asked “how’s it going?”
I recognized him too, but only vaguely. I couldn’t place him exactly - couldn’t remember precisely when or how or even if I’d helped him, if I’d found him a book he wanted, if he’d been a teen in one of my programs a few years ago, or a regular on the public computers I greeted as I walked past every day on my way to staff a service desk. He was familiar, but had changed since I last saw him, and at a glance it was clear that time had not been easy on him. I wondered if he might be thinking the same thing of me. We chatted briefly, and then I went on my way again, off to check another errand off my list. But the interaction made me pause, and I appreciated the way in which this surprise encounter disrupted the single-mindedness with which I had been pursuing the day.
I keep coming back to this interaction, and I think the main reason is that it reminded me of the importance of connection. I’ve worked in public libraries for many years now, and it seems that over time, when we serve the public, and especially when we serve so many challenging or vulnerable or marginalized members of the public, we build up a bit of a wall. We need this wall - it’s a self-preservation essential. There are days at the public library, and I know this is true of so many other public-facing workplaces as well, where if you have not adequately fortified your wall, the misery of the world is overwhelmingly in the foreground. You do have to protect yourself from it if you want to keep going. And yet, this little moment of connection in the gloomy parkade reminded me that if the wall is too high and too solid, it blocks out the light too. It reminded me how important it is to have some windows in my wall, even just a few little ones, to see and be seen. To connect.