All That Wilts Shall Bloom Again

An Artist's Rendering of Me on July 31. 
Source: An Amazon vendor that has absolutely no business selling or marketing these stickers to non-adults. 

Summer Reading Program. 

If you know, you know. 

I thought I knew. I have, after all, worked in libraries now for 16 summers; more summers than not, I was a front-line worker. For four of those summers, I managed people who were completely immersed in it. And of course, I had my good friend and veteran Children's Librarian, Abby Johnson, to blog and share firsthand accounts of the programs, the intensity, the added desk shifts, the madness. The fucking madness of it all. I thought I knew. 

Comrades, I knew nothing. Not until this (distressingly hot) summer, my first in a 100%-immersed-in- Youth-Services-management gig, did I truly learn what it means to live through Summer Reading Program at a public library. And when I say "live through", what I really mean is "endure". Slog through? Melt and droop and ooze through? Whatever. A post I made on Facebook, relatively early on during Summer Reading Program, sums it up pretty well:  

And of course, what have I to complain about? It was the librarians and assistants in my department who I feel did the lion's share of the work: they are the ones who planned and staffed the programs that drew in hordes of children and families and caretakers. I just provided all the desk staffing and moral support I could and tried to keep the schedule in order and helped with program cleanup when I could and tried not nag folks too much about their timecards. But whatever, we all played our role in what, I'm told, was a pretty successful Summer Reading Program. However, by early July, I was dragging myself home every day, fairly wilting from the heat and my ears still ringing from the incessant hollering and screams (I promise, it's a Children's Department, not a torture chamber) and not able to do much except hunker down in my chilly, darkened living room, pulling faces at the cats and trying to remember a time before or after Summer Reading Program. 

It was fun. Fun and funny and frenetic and frickin challenging in all the good ways, but I am not going to pretend even in the slightest that I'm sorry that it's over for another 10 months or so. Because, while my wall calendar and desk calendar are still open to June 1, Summer Reading Program officially ended on July 31. RIP, Oceans of Possibilities. We'll catch you on the flipside, in your resurrected form sometime next May. 

It's actually kind of fitting that the first day of Life After Summer Reading Program starts today, on August 1. Some of my witchywoowoo friends celebrate Lughnasadh on August 1; it is the first of the harvest festivals, one in which we harvest the fruit we had sown in the spring. We celebrate our harvests knowing that the dark winter is coming, reminding ourselves that all that falls shall rise again. Including us. And including Summer Reading Program. But for now, a fallow time. A time of rest. 

So, okay, it's a bit of a stretch, but you get the idea. Summer Reading Program has passed for another year, and hopefully the year marches on to a cooler, gentler time, and those of us who wilted under the heat and work of summer can rise and thrive, at least briefly, once again. 

Except maybe the flowers I tried to grow on my patio this summer. They're fucked.