By Jennifer A.
I’m 30 now and don’t live near the public library in my hometown of Midland, MI, but I will never forget it. It doesn’t look the same as it did 20+ years ago – it now has a coffee shop, a teen room, and several updated and refreshed spaces – but it still has the feeling, that feeling you get when you walk into a library and there awaits endless choices of where your imagination can take you inside its shelves. My mother or father took me to the library every 1-2 weeks to pick as many books as I could possibly want from the shelves to take home. When I was little, it was picture books, and boy does Grace A. Dow Memorial Library have a lot of those. I competed in Battle of the Books at the Library. I participated in the Summer Reading Program EVERY summer to get the free TCBY coupons and free Pizza Hut personal pan pizza.
The library was a place of calm and wonder, and whether it was during the school year or during the summer, I read. And read. And read. I read a vast majority of the teen fiction and could tell you exactly where my favorite books were on the shelves. Now, I take my sons there when I go to visit my parents, and while my jobs is not in Midland, it has crossed my mind to move back there just for the library. I can’t imagine what I would have done without the library. I would have never been able to delve into new worlds and expand my mind and imagination. I loved reading so much I went on to get my literature degree. Thank you Grace A. Dow Memorial Library for being a true source of joy and peace in my life. I will never, ever forget you.Air Max