Oh yeah, did I not mention that? During story-time at the Bon Air Library, children can sit under a fanciful fiberglass tree that stretches to the ceiling. How magical! If I were a child, I’d never want to leave.
Maybe there are times when we could shift the lens from “resistant to change” to “mourning for loss.”
I don’t think the church-lady and I truly begrudged new children their tree or chairs. I think neither of us would have had such strong attachments to our church/library if we ourselves hadn’t had formative/magical experiences of our own there as children. For both of us, those places had changed over the years and now, finally, gone away. Where we once sat to experience the world, we were now watching a part of it pass us by.
It’s never really about the chairs.
[A shorter version of this appeared as the Editor’s Note in the July 2022 edition of Evince Magazine.]
