Sometimes, after work, when I can’t think of anything worthwhile to do with my time and I’m too tired to run, I walk to the library. A really important person once told me to, but he had a weird way of going about it.

Home for me, right now, is a small beach town in south Jersey, which feels a little weird considering I was born and raised in Manhattan. Certain aspects of tight-knit communities make me feel really paranoid. Like I’m being watched and there’s a town gathering to discuss all of the weird things I do.

It makes it hard for me to leave my house, and this is something that kind of embarrasses me. I am such a confident person — why don’t I feel comfortable walking around in the town that I currently live in? 

So, I go to the library. 

I don’t really go for the books, yet. Just the plaque in the library that has a picture of my grandpa (Poppy) on it: Mark Slotkin. He was president of the board of trustees of the Margate Public Library up until he passed in 2015, a couple months before I turned 10.

For the first decade of my life, not many kids wanted to play with me. Maybe someday I’ll have the words to talk about this, but I just wasn’t really a chill kid. 

My grandpa spoke to me like every word I said mattered, and he made an effort to engage with me in a way so many others didn’t. 

Even though I was so young, I felt like there were so many people who were more impacted by his loss than I was. I didn’t allow myself to be upset about the fact that the one person I could always count on to play with was gone. 

He was the person who made me feel like a normal kid. Like I didn’t have some part of myself I had to be embarrassed of. 

I remember having so many questions for him. So many things I wanted him to tell me that I would understand when I was older. But, as he was suffering from cancer and trying to set his wife, kids and three other grandkids up for success, I felt like it wasn’t about me. 

I can’t go back and ask him how he did it. How he made me feel so safe.

So instead, I walk to the library. I talk to my Poppy. He already knows this, of course, but I just got a library card. I don’t understand how, because I’m not a permanent resident here. But I spoke to a librarian, and I signed a document.

I like to imagine that he sensed I needed him, the same way everyone else did. 

In my fantasies, he told someone 10 years ago that one day a girl who looked kind of like him would come into the library with a smile on her face but a little bit of fear in her eyes and try to explain in far too much detail that she knew she belonged there and that she really wanted a library card.  

And, of course, there’s a chance that he didn’t predict my body would know to take me there — that there was something I had been searching for.

But just below his name, there’s a Ray Bradbury quote that says, “Without libraries, what have we? We have no past and no future.” 

The public library is the pinnacle of community, and it is an accessible service worth investing in. 

Go to the library. That was the only answer I ever needed. 

Thank you, Poppy. I wish you could’ve told me in person. Now I’ll tell everyone else.

Sylvie Slotkin is a rising Medill junior. She can be contacted at [email protected]. If you would like to respond publicly to this op-ed, send a Letter to the Editor to [email protected]. The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the views of all staff members of The Daily Northwestern.