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 As I’ve grown up, many of my interests have fallen by the wayside. No, I’m not on a self-actualized quest to become a jack-of-all-trades. I’ve just outgrown certain things, or they decided to outgrow me first.

Tennis turned into keeping my kids from bouncing off the walls. Horseback riding was a tad to risky to me– since I virtually spent three years having babies and recovering from having babies.

Any kind of crafty project is just way too inviting for my kids; paints, hot-glue guns, thread and needle– try keeping all that away from a brood of toddlers.

I did manage to hang on to one of my most favorite past-times– reading. I can do that during my twenty minutes of solitude in a bubble-bath. I can do that leaning over the kitchen counter in between burger flips. I can do that with one child sitting in my lap and the other clinging to my leg out of jealousy. I can read anytime, anywhere.

I vividly recall my mom fussing one lazy summer afternoon about my irritating devotion to the printed word.

The heat was unbearable. You know, those dry, molten days when you just wish the Chesapeake Bay would rise up and flood your back yard. A day so hot, drowning wouldn’t be so bad…as long as you got to be in cool water for the process.

Mom was going to The Pool. On those days, everyone went to The Pool. Everyone, that is, except me– and my mom just didn’t understand. Why in the world I would rather sit cooped up in the house, when I could be frolicking with half the Shore at The Pool?

That was just they way I was, and that’s the way I still am.

My husband complains sometimes, too.

“Can’t you just put that book down for five minutes?” He’ll say, leering over our dinner plates, while my daughter pitches macaroni across the room.

Yes, I read through dinner sometimes. I read on the treadmill at the YMCA. I’ll read pretty much whenever a few minutes of free time presents itself. I guess one could argue that I’m addicted to books, and I wouldn’t deny it. But then, there are worse addictions one could have, I would point out.

Sometimes, I was able to coerce my mom into dropping me at the library on her way to The Pool. Those were my favorite summer days. While the Shore sweated it out in the elements, I sat cross-legged amid a pile of books. I meandered down the aisles in search of that perfect book, much like Dorothy on her quest down the yellow brick road.

While the dragonfly’s and bumble-bee’s hummed outside, I sat in the library as the hum of the air conditioner carried me through historical battles, futuristic planets, and steamy mysteries (that I will admit, I probably shouldn’t have read back then).

Go ahead, call me a “Library Lover”. I can take it. After all, it’s true.

I shudder to think who I would be if the library hadn’t been there to foster my love of the printed word.

Fortunately, there are many people out there that agree with me. We could make up a club. At the least, someone thought to designate the month of February for us– as Library Lovers Month.

So while I could sit here all day and expound on my debt to the Eastern Shore Public Library, I have better things to do. What, you ask?

Well, of course, I’m going to the library.