For a few months I’ve been hearing this phrase—here for you—in unlikely places. The words have stayed with me like a thrum beneath the sickening roar of our civic dismantling. Someone is here for me. Someone is here for me in my forsakenness; someone stands ready to help.
It started in the still, small quiet of my local library where I hadn’t been for many years, since the only “library” I borrowed from was a free digital library, the books delivered not by actual librarians but by that Amazonian anaconda that had taken over the world by squeezing real life out of us. It had become my custom, although I hate now to admit it, to browse the regional catalog of free digital library books online and place a hold on the good ones, the popular ones, the new and notable ones, the prize-winners. But it was often a kind of infinite hold, a purgatory lasting weeks or months for my turn to borrow, undermining even the word “library” as a place you walk into (on your feet) find a book (on a shelf) and take it home (in your hands) that very day.
I knew that my local library, like all public libraries, had been under strain. Financial strain, yes, cultural strain, and political strain. And yet I hadn’t fully realized that I was adding to the strain by not fulfilling my job as a patron of this vital public service, an exemplar of democracy at its very best.
And so it came to be that in January I buckled under the weight of an extended digital hold and set foot in my small-town library, no farther away than the end of my street, and asked if they had the book I had expected to wait a near-lifetime for.
Yes, we have it on the shelf. Would you like to borrow it?
I can’t believe it!
Do you have a library card?
Yes, but I’m not sure where it is . . .
How about your phone number?
That’s all I need?
Yep.
I can’t believe you have what I’ve been waiting 96 weeks for!
We’re here for you. We’re always here for you.
Even saying it, the librarian knew she was saying something more. It wasn’t just some vague assurance that gets muttered like “thoughts and prayers”or “have a nice day.” It was literal. The world is here for you. Your town and your country are here for you. The books and their writers are here for you. The librarians, the volunteers, and the universe of readers are here for you. The place is here, the people are here, and in this time and place, they are here for you.
Whether we fall or rise depends entirely on serving one another in every way and place possible. Look to the people who are here for you, still here for you, wherever you are and whatever you need. It may seem insignificant, irrelevant, old-fashioned, and unnecessary, but it’s not. This is how we survive.
Photo by Rabie Madaci on Unsplash