Today's Helping of Chicken Soup for the Soul

[Guest guest]

A Little Girl's Dream

By Jann

The promise was a long time keeping. But then, so was the dream.

In the early 1950s in a small Southern California town, a little girl hefted yet

another load of books onto the tiny library's counter.

The girl was a reader. Her parents had books all over their home, but not always

the ones she wanted. So she'd make her weekly trek to the yellow library with

the brown trim, the little one-room building where the children's library

actually was just a nook. Frequently, she ventured out of that nook in search of

heftier fare.

As the white-haired librarian hand-stamped the due dates in the ten-year-old's

choices, the little girl looked longingly at " The New Book " prominently

displayed on the counter. She marveled again at the wonder of writing a book and

having it honored like that, right there for the world to see.

That particular day, she confessed her goal.

" When I grow up, " she said, " I'm going to be a writer. I'm going to write

books. "

The librarian looked up from her stamping and smiled, not with the condescension

so many children receive, but with encouragement.

" When you do write that book, " she replied, " bring it into our library and we'll

put it on display, right here on the counter. "

The little girl promised she would.

As she grew, so did her dream. She got her first job in ninth grade, writing

brief personality profiles, which earned her $1.50 each from the local

newspaper. The money palled in comparison with the magic of seeing her words on

paper.

A book was a long way off.

She edited her high-school paper, married and started a family, but the itch to

write burned deep. She got a part-time job covering school news at a weekly

newspaper. It kept her brain busy as she balanced babies.

But no book.

She went to work full time for a major daily. Even tried her hand at magazines.

Still no book.

Finally, she believed she had something to say and started a book. She sent it

off to two publishers and was rejected. She put it away, sadly. Several years

later, the old dream increased in persistence. She got an agent and wrote

another book. She pulled the other out of hiding, and soon both were sold.

But the world of book publishing moves slower than that of daily newspapers, and

she waited two long years. The day the box arrived on her doorstep with its free

author's copies, she ripped it open. Then she cried. She'd waited so long to

hold her dream in her hands.

Then she remembered that librarian's invitation, and her promise.

Of course, that particular librarian had died long ago, and the little library

had been razed to make way for a larger incarnation.

The woman called and got the name of the head librarian. She wrote a letter,

telling her how much her predecessor's words had meant to the girl. She'd be in

town for her thirtieth high school reunion, she wrote, and could she please

bring her two books by and give them to the library? It would mean so much to

that ten-year-old girl, and seemed a way of honoring all the librarians who had

ever encouraged a child.

The librarian called and said, " Come. " So she did, clutching a copy of each

book.

She found the big new library right across the street from her old high school;

just opposite the room where she'd struggled through algebra, mourning the

necessity of a subject that writers would surely never use, and nearly on top of

the spot where her old house once stood, the neighborhood demolished for a civic

center and this looming library.

Inside, the librarian welcomed her warmly. She introduced a reporter from the

local newspaper - a descendant of the paper she'd begged a chance to write for

long ago.

Then she presented her books to the librarian, who placed them on the counter

with a sign of explanation. Tears rolled down the woman's cheeks.

Then she hugged the librarian and left, pausing for a picture outside, which

proved that dreams can come true and promises can be kept. Even if it takes

thirty-eight years.

The ten-year-old girl and the writer she'd become posed by the library sign,

right next to the readerboard, which said:

WELCOME BACK,

JANN MITCHELL