For a few days now, from the gallery of the small university library where I spend not just my days but, it seems, my years, I’ve been watching something many would call an unusual sight.

It’s a boy who’s far too young (not to say little) to be a student himself. I never knew I could guess people’s ages by eye, but I’d say the boy isn’t older than 10.

His dad is a professor at the university, and we run into him very often, not only on campus but also at various cultural events, where, like us, he comes with his kids (he has three). I don’t know the man personally, nor do I know what he teaches. But he’s one of those people you see so often that you simply remember them.

For several days in a row now, this boy has been exploring the rows of books in the library. He puts a few chosen ones on “his” table in the reading room and then just sits there, reading or leafing through them. For hours. Then his dad comes to get him, and they go for a “coffee” together in the cafeteria (I know because I’ve bumped into them there too).

This sight delights me on so many levels, which is why I wanted to write down what I saw.

I find it beautiful that the little one isn’t “glued” to a phone or a computer, but simply finds fun (you won’t believe it) in a library. Not that I think modern media are bad per se, but that’s for another time.

Watching from a distance like this, I can’t possibly know whether he likes playing video games or how much time he spends in front of a screen, but I can see the enthusiasm with which he explores the books when he’s here.

In a way, I see myself at his age. I see Sofka in a few years.

A stack of books and a teddy bear in a child’s room

Children Are Our Future, but We Shape It

I’d certainly love to bring my own daughter to the university one day to spend time there, and for her not to find it “boring”.

I believe that with childhood memories like these, it’s hard to grow into a bad person, isn’t it?

Maybe none of this makes any sense to you, but to me it’s very emotional and moving.

I just remember how much I loved going to the city library with my mom and dad, where there weren’t nearly as many books, where you couldn’t “cruise” on your own between endless rows of shelves looking for whatever might catch your interest, and where you certainly didn’t have a place to start reading them right there on the spot.

And I loved it anyway, despite all those “shortcomings”.

And maybe that’s exactly why I still love spending hours and hours among books today, here in the reading room and at home, and exploring the shelves of the children’s library with Sofka at least once a week.

Children are our future, but to a large extent we are the ones who shape it.

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

S-Mama

P.S. I wrote this post last summer, while I was still working on my master’s thesis. But it got lost among all the other unpublished and published posts, or maybe it didn’t… Maybe it was just waiting for me to find it and publish it today of all days. And it makes me think, really think…