Although I read a lot of books (I’m on my 11th of this new year already), it isn’t often that I find one which speaks to whom I was as a young teen and whom I am now strive to be as a school librarian. Katie Van Heidrich’s memoir, The In-Between, told in verse, manages to do exactly that. I remember childhood years of moving with such frequency that I had been a student in 3 different school districts before the age of 10. The process of packing and unpacking and the sense of always losing something in each move – be it a favorite item of clothing, a toy, or a piece of something from deep inside myself, will stay with me forever.
The poem below says it far more eloquently than I ever could. Hold your heart and read on.
“I’m Looking for Stillness”
Sameness,
steadfastness.
I’m looking for consistency,
sameness,
unwavering sameness.
I’m looking for the opportunity
to stay in one place
so long
that I can look up
one day
and say –
Wow!
I’ve been here for how long?
which I’m hoping
we’ll find
in Chicago.
And if I can’t get that at home,
I know I can at least find that at the library,
where you can find any and everything you’re looking for,
where you can be still and quiet, too,
where you can find still and quiet, too,
where you can set up shop near the librarian,
who is trained to impose more stillness and quietness
in the rare event your stillness and quietness
may be interrupted, because
there is an enforcer,
a protector,
while you disappear to faraway places
that allow you to get far away from
here.
DelSo 