The door to the entrance of the
library cracked open, squeaking loud and proud, as it always did, interrupting
my regular dose of holy-crap-what-am-I-going-to-do-for-the-rest-of-my-life. Working
evening shifts at the Alton Public Library always turned into an examination of
my future and what exactly I was going to do with it. It usually started after
all the kids left, when I remembered I used to ask for a coloring page just
like they did. Suddenly I’d be lost in a whirlwind of thoughts about college
and finding someone and just everything that was to come.
A tall woman wearing a pair of
jeans and nice button down walked through the doors, a smile bringing in a
little different atmosphere to the quiet between the shelves. The smell of fall
air trailed behind her. I smiled back—just lips—and said hello in my work
voice. (It was a little high pitched compared to my regular voice.)
She looked at me for a second, the
pencil for signing in to the computers hanging midair. “How old are you?”
“I’m 17,” I said, still putting on
a smile for the patron. “I’m a junior at MOC-Floyd Valley over in Orange City.”
“Wow! Okay! That sounds really
great,” she said, with the most excitement I had ever heard someone exclaim
about hearing about my schooling. “Where are you going next year? What do you
want to be?”
I was slightly taken aback by all
the questions. “I’m probably going to go to the University of Iowa after next
year,” I said, “to study English. I’m thinking about going into publishing.”
She clapped her hands together, and exclaimed,
“Oh my gosh, wow. You must be an amazing writer if you’re going into English,
then. I’m Marilyn, by the way!”
Another patron walked in through
the doors, and I murmured a quick hello.
I shrugged my shoulders and smiled
again, thinking it was the end of our conversation. “I don’t know about that. I’m
Caitlin.”
Most patrons smile back and go sit
down at the computer, but instead, this woman named Marilyn, leaned up against
the circulation desk. Her short blonde hair fell in her face and she carefully
tucked it behind her ear. She seemed to be about in her 50s or so, and the
subtle wrinkles on her forehead made me believe that she had done some living.
She spoke softly and excitedly at the same time, “So why the University of
Iowa?”
“I went to this writing program
there last summer,” I started to explain, as I had a few times to other
patrons. I went on to say that it was the best two weeks of my life—and not
just an exaggeration of that. It—the people I wrote and laughed with—changed
me. "Iowa City is amazing."
Marilyn sighed with content. “Wow,”
she exhaled. I’d begun to believe that her favorite word was “wow.” For a
second, she paused, a smile resting on her lips that never seemed to frown. Her
green eyes gazed off into a world I couldn’t see, and for a second, I thought
she would finally go sit down. Instead, she looked at me again, and said, “I
want to show you some pictures of mine. I’ve got a few stories of my own.”
There was no one else in the
library, so she went on to tell me her life story.
Marilyn hadn’t kept the same job
for more than five years. Her life went from boyfriend to boyfriend, and one
mediocre job after another. She wanted to go back to school so she could start
working in a nursing home. She explained how she sometimes wrote poetry of her
own, and even read me a few of her pieces.
The pictures she showed me proved
that she had once been a beautiful, and independent young woman. I smiled at
everything she showed me. She lived and she lived and she lived.
“Ah, and my childhood was pretty
good, too.” She told me about her kindergarten best friend and how no matter
what anyone else said about her, Marilyn still wanted to be there for her. Her
best friend was black.
“I didn’t understand why it
mattered if her skin color was different,” she said, shaking her head, showing
the first sign of disapproval of anything. “We’ve all got the same color
hearts, so what difference does it make?”
It took me a second to understand
that she was talking about an era where racism existed and almost thrived—I felt
some admiration for Marilyn.
After learning all the details she had to
offer of her life, we somehow got into the topic of religion.
“I don’t have a religion,” she
stated matter-of-factly.
I tried to hide my confusion—mostly
because the poems she had shared with me earlier had all been relating to
Christianity. “Oh?”
“I am a Believer,” she said. A
laugh came along with one of her big grins. “Don’t look at me like that,
Caitlin! So. For a long time, I honestly didn’t care. I was more worried about
trying to live my life than I was finding a higher power.” I felt myself trying
to hang on every word that flew out of her mouth. She explained that her
professor in college didn’t believe in anything. After a second, she clucked
her tongue. “And I guess, at the time, I didn’t believe anything existed either.
“For a
while, I was living down South with a boyfriend of mine. It was the middle of
the summer, and we were just taking it one day at a time. We drank, smoked, had
sex—I was a little wild. One night, I was walking home,” she said. Then,
offhandedly, like swatting a fly, said, “And God spoke to me.”
I couldn’t
help but let my mouth drop a little. “God spoke to you?” I asked, a little
incredulously.
She nodded
happily. “He said, no—he whispered, ‘Marilyn, believe in Me.’ It shook me. In
fact, it changed me wholly. That was the day I became a Believer. I do not
believe that religion can be centered on any particular church. I believe in
morals and people doing good in the world. I believe that God is real and that
we are here for Him. I am a Believer. I’ve been on lots of mission trips. I’ve
met incredible people. But I still feel like there’s more I can do,” she paused
for a second. “Wow, my life is good.”
I shook my
head. Not in disbelief, but in the idea that this woman had somehow done
everything and anything she could in her life, and she still wanted to do more.
She knew what she wanted and she didn’t let a single second pass her by. “You
should write a book,” I told her.
She threw
her head back and laughed. “Only if you publish it.”
I bit my
lip, not sure if I wanted to ask my next question. “So, you’ve had a pretty fulfilling
life.”
She nodded
thoughtfully. “Yeah, yeah, I guess you could say that.”
“Were you
ever afraid of doing something wrong—like, were you scared before you decided
to do something or change anything?”
“Of course
I was scared, but if I was never afraid, I wouldn’t have done anything at all.”
I haven’t
seen Marilyn since that night she came into the library. We talked my entire
two and a half hour shift. I have absolutely no idea where she is right now in
her life, but all I know is, I’m sure she’s told her life story to a hundreds
of other people by now. And I’m also sure that she’s added a couple more quirky
facts in there, too.
My future,
my life, is waiting for me like a boy waiting on a doorstep for his date—both
utterly nauseous and completely ecstatic. So, in honor of Marilyn, I’d have to
say:
Wow. It’s
going to be a good one.
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