on Library Fines

I went to the public library this morning to return Gilead, a novel that had been on my “To Read List” for months. I intended to return the book earlier this week but procrastination and a one day closing of the library installed another brick in the road to Hades. So the book was overdue and I was in debt to one of the few worthy beneficiaries of my tax dollars.

The cost of my negligence was a mere thirty cents; a fine so small that not even this Heidelberg Scotsman could complain. For a quarter and a nickel, I earned a guilt-free conscience and was restored to the position of patron in “good standing” within seconds of my confession. Quite a bargain!

I also got something I didn’t bargain for – the return of a long buried memory.For a few moments at the circulation desk, I was dragged back to another time I had kept a book longer than I should have.

I think I was about ten-years-old. I must have been pretty bored to have walked all the way to the Sparta Public Library at the corner of Market and Jackson Streets. I don’t remember the book at all; not its subject, title, or author. But I do remember not returning the book when it was due.

The fine for returning a library book one day late was a penny in those days; five days late and the fine was a nickel. Although I don’t remember the number of days between the due date and the date of the actual return, I do remember the fine was more than a dollar.

Sixty years later, I still can’t think of any reasonable answer that might explain why I kept the book for so long. I could have renewed the loan repeatedly and avoided a fine. I could have returned it before the fine grew past the nickel level. But I put it off and lied to myself until I couldn’t pay the fine. By then, I had become too scared to ‘fess up and take the consequences. I know that my tardiness makes no sense.

I acknowledge that I failed to do the right thing. All I could say then, and even now, is that I have no excuse for such behavior. Like many people in difficult financial straits, I hoped that by doing nothing the problem would disappear or solve itself. Of course, that rarely works. How irrational can one be?

Theologians call such irresponsible behavior a manifestation of original sin; the human nature that comes with being born. Now we might say that we inherited a flaw in the DNA from our pre-historical, disobedient parents.

It is not a comfortable experience being unable to excuse or justify one’s bad behavior. It is even worse to behave irresponsibly, knowing that an escape from punishment is impossible.

Miss Bess Brown was the librarian who had the authority to wring every last penny from my resources. She could have insisted that I find 50-plus empty soda bottles and collected the two cents deposit for each. She could have collected from my parents. She could have kept me under the sword of Damocles. But she didn’t.

What Miss Brown did was more memorable than any of those possibilities. She forgave my debt. Not because I deserved such a gift. Not because I really wasn’t a bad boy. Not because I couldn’t help but procrastinate.

I never paid a penny of that library fine because it was Miss Bess Brown’s nature to forgive, to offer a new beginning, and to teach a young boy by loving rather than condemning. That experience with an overdue library book and Bess Brown now seems like a revelation.

A revelation worth passing on.

Changes are due

My wife pulled up the last of the almost dead petunias yesterday. Too little rain, too much heat, and Father Time did them in. The three tomato plants that yielded more huge tomatoes than I could eat now have only two small green tomatoes waiting to ripen. The leaves on the flowering crab apple have begun falling. Fall, and then winter, is coming. My list of things to do before winter is growing like the weeds in my hosta plot.

When should I shut off the outside faucets? Drain the garden hose and take it to the garage? Clean up the outdoor grill? Check the anti-freeze in the car? Put away the short sleeve shirts and dig out my sweat suits that I call my nursing home clothes? Should I do those chores while the signs of summer still abound? Or should I wait until the very last moment?

Years ago, in the age when men wore hats, my grandfather traded his felt hat for a straw one every Memorial Day and reversed the exchange on Labor Day. He chose the dates for changing hats; nothing could override his decision, not even my grandmother and certainly not the weather. Not even a frost in June or a hot spell in September altered his choice of hats.

If I do those outdoor chores that say, “I am ready for winter,” too soon, I make winter seem longer and summer shorter. But if I sacrifice certainty and allow the outdoor temperature to control when I get ready for the season’s change, my schedule, routine, and maybe even my life, will be out of control. Oh my!

The older I get, the clearer I see what I do not control. With age comes the reluctant acknowledgment that control of my life is rapidly shrinking. I didn’t choose my gender, my parents, not even the number of siblings. My fingerprints, eye color, and the size and shape of my ears were not of my choosing either. Who would ever choose ears like mine?

The wife I have is fifty years older than the one I chose in 1957. The babies she and I made together aren’t babies any longer; they are in their forties. Some of my choices in friends didn’t pan out. My choices in vocations never lasted for longer than a decade. I didn’t get to choose whether I would have a heart attack; and certainly not its date. Although I wanted to run, or at least walk, in the six kilometer Abe’s Amble at the close of the State Fair, my choice was trumped with an emphatic, “You can’t.”

A long time ago Jesus taught me that I could not even choose the number of hairs on my head. To help me understand that persistent lack of control applied to his best friends as well, he said he chose them, not the other way around. Even though I have long suspected the choices I make are a lot fewer than I imagined or hoped, I keep trying to control my life, my family, and my world.

Somewhere deep in my soul I hear a small voice whispering, “Let me be in control. Take your hands off the wheel. Trust me. I am wiser than you.”

I think I'll listen. No better than that, I’m going to give up my obsession with control before I wind up the garden hose this year. Maybe when I team up with Jesus and ask his father to help, maybe we will be prepared without sweat. What do you think?