March 30, 2022

In my shelter-at-home days in March of 2020, before the WHO had even announced that COVID-19 was officially a pandemic, I got in the habit of taking walks to distract myself. One Sunday, I wandered a couple of blocks from my apartment and turned onto a one-way street that branched off the main street right at the Primitive Baptist Church.

The church took up two lots, and its armadillo siding was fading so badly I’d hesitate to say what color it was originally. Something in the yellow family? The houses beyond it were mostly well-kept, though, and awfully cute.

A few houses down, I spied a little lending library – one of those tiny glass-doored houses for our papery friends. I have always had eerily good luck with books. The right ones for the occasion seem to be magnetically drawn toward me, or I to them. Banking on this, I eagerly grabbed the knob and opened the glass door.