Someday when I am old and grey and have pursued my second career (do I even have a first career yet?) as the next Andrew Lloyd Webber, I will write a comedic musical number about my experience at library curbside pickup today. Mind you, I am eternally grateful for how smoothly University of Toronto has allowed me to accumulate many books in various languages (some which I know, and some which I…don’t) about Visigothic Spain and liturgical history in my few weeks since arriving in Canada. And the COVID policies allow me to hang onto them until the end of the semester– a book hoarder/deadline-forgetter’s dream! After my remote fall semester limited to HathiTrust, JSTOR, and my home library, access to curbside pickup at the many libraries in the UofT system is positively liberating.
However, a couple of my particularly academic personality traits viz. over-enthusiasm (for Isidore and the Mozarabic liturgy) and absent-mindedness (regarding just about anything but Isidore and the Mozarabic Liturgy) manifest themselves with certain vicissitudes in the curbside pickup process. Not to get all theological here, but Our Lord on high has so generously answered many of my prayers of late (like actually being able to come to Canada!) and He also has a sense of humor. He couldn’t let me get away with everything going smoothly now, could He? Mortification was inevitable.
All of that is to say: by the time I arrived at a new-to-me college library on Wednesday to pick up a book, I was in for it. For I thought I was picking up one book, but I had in fact requested many. (This happened yesterday at another library, but they were all relatively compact Jocelyn Hillgarth books that fit easily into my bag at the time. How did I let this miscalculation happen two days in a row? Over-enthusiasm and absent-mindedness).
The odds were already stacked against me the moment I first left my apartment, ostensibly to go to the bank. My trusty Kate Spade tote (a cherished gift from my future in-laws) was already a bit crowded with some financial documentation; to tell the truth, I had honestly forgotten all about the library books still lying in wait across town when I went the bank. In these sub-zero (celsius) temperatures, however, I try to leave my cozy apartment and the library books I have already accumulated as seldom as possible. I also realized, upon finishing my business at the bank, that I was cutting one library closing time close and it would not be open on Thursday. I declined returning to my apartment for another bag and scurried across the icy sidewalks to Regis College Library.
A fatal mistake…
…as I realized when a kind librarian trundled out a cart with ~all my books~ atop it. News to me: I had requested a 1000-page volume in the ‘oversize’ category (image at the bottom of this post).
Lest you give me the benefit of the doubt that this was an accident, I hereby present to you the large print in the online library catalogue next to the call number for this excellent book of Mozarabic liturgical texts. My glee at finally getting my hands upon a hard copy of so much Mozarabic content was only somewhat tempered by my shock at the size of the book, but the size of the book continued to cause problems.
The librarian called out “that should keep you busy for a while” as I staggered under the weight of my acquisitions (of course they were all slippery hardcovers) to a nearby barely-clear-of-snow-and-icy-cold metal bench to organize. My bag, normally roomy enough for four books plus whatever trinkets and financial documents I had floating around the bottom, abandoned its Mary Poppins characteristics when presented with the hefty Liber Mozarabicus sacramentorum, which I barely squeezed in along with one companion. Leaving the yellow oversize tag peeking out of the undone zipper, I tucked the other two books (what protean characteristics a hardcover book takes on when handled with gloved hands!) under my arm and with difficulty set forth to the neighboring library where waited my next curbside pickup appointment. To my great relief, only one book awaited me there–and in an ~oversized~ paper bag no less! Such joy!
I gleefully stuffed my loose books into said paper bag along with their new friend and tried to maneuver everything such that straps of my Kate Spade tote weren’t threatening to snap under stress and such that the paper bag wasn’t jostled about too badly. Here I anticipated a potentially fatal mistake: Some of the sidewalks on my route home were still covered with ice and snow, which I had not anticipated earlier when I wore sneakers out the door to the bank. Recovering balance and safeguarding my precious cargo would be no easy task, should I slip while strolling through Queen’s Park. Silly of me to worry! I would not get even that far.
I took a few more steps and nearly pitched all the books into an ice-encrusted fountain when Kate Spade slid off my jacketed shoulder. This would not do, so I rearranged and bundled the books into what I thought was a very sustainable game of jenga that would last me most of the walk home. Once more I set forth gallantly; immediately the bottom of the paper bag tore open for the books to burst forth (no books were harmed, I hastily tumbled them all onto a bench).
I had been praying for opportunities to practice the virtue of humility, had I not? Had the guardian angel of Regis college library sensed that I occasionally make a joke at the expense of its patron Jesuit order and sent upon me as punishment this embarrassingly simple but unendurable task of hauling these books homeward? In true millennial fashion, I gave up and called an Uber. My driver got lost while my second-hand embarrassment prevented me from correcting him: a fitting end to my comedic library excursion…
…but doesn’t end there, because when I got back home I realized that the second-heaviest book (next to the Liber Mozarabicus) wasn’t even one I had requested! To the unlucky theology student whose name borders mine in the alphabet, I promise I shall speedily return Introduction to the Mystery of the Church tomorrow. Mea culpa.
Musings of a medievalist mama 