For the past few days, from the gallery of the small university library where I spend not just days but years of my life, I’ve been watching what many would call an unusual sight.

It’s a boy who is far too young — to put it gently — to be a student himself. I’ve never been good at guessing people’s ages at a glance, but I’d say he’s no older than ten.

His father is a professor at the university, and we run into them often — not only on campus, but at various cultural events, to which he brings his children along, just as we do (he has three). I don’t know the man personally, and I have no idea what he teaches. But he’s one of those people you encounter so frequently that you simply remember them.

For the past several days in a row, this boy has been exploring the rows of books in the library. He places a few chosen volumes on “his” table in the reading room and then just sits there — reading or leafing through them. For hours at a time. Then his father comes to collect him and together they head to the cafeteria for a “coffee” (I know because I’ve bumped into them there too, quite by chance).

This image delights me on several levels, which is exactly why I wanted to write it down.

It’s wonderful that the boy isn’t glued to his phone or a screen, but finds his entertainment — you won’t believe it — in a library of all places. I don’t think modern media are bad in themselves, but that’s a topic for another time.

Looking from a distance, I can’t possibly know whether he loves video games or how much screen time he gets. But I see the enthusiasm with which he explores the books when he’s here.

I see myself in him, in some way, at his age. And I see Sofka in a few years’ time.

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Children Are Our Future – But We Shape It

I would very much love to bring my daughter here one day too — to let her spend time at the university, and have it not feel like a chore to her.

With childhood memories like that, I believe it’s hard to grow up to be a bad person, don’t you think?

Maybe none of this makes much sense to you — but for me it’s deeply emotional and moving.

I just think back to how much I loved going to the public library with Mum and Dad as a child, where there were far fewer books, where you couldn’t simply wander between endless rows of shelves and pick out whatever caught your eye, and where there certainly wasn’t a place to sit down and start reading right then and there.

And yet it was wonderful to me — even with all those “limitations.”

And maybe that’s exactly why it still feels wonderful today to spend hours among books — here in the reading room, at home — and to explore the shelves of the children’s library with Sofka at least once a week.

Children are our future — but we shape it in large part.

And while I write these lines, the boy is leaving with his father — probably heading home, to a warm dinner, to tell his mum and his siblings about the kind of day he had. And he’ll be back tomorrow. I’m sure of it.

S-Mama

P.S. This text was written last summer, while I was still working on my Master’s thesis. But it got lost among all the other unpublished and published pieces — or maybe it didn’t. Maybe it was simply waiting for me to find it and publish it today of all days. And so I sit here thinking, really thinking…