Musings on the new Rockford Public Library
July 10, 2024

On June 22, Marie and I attended the grand opening of the new downtown Rockford Public Library. First impression: It's beautiful, but I can’t tell what that building thinks it’s supposed to be. Lit up at night, along the riverfront, it looks like a cruise ship. By day, it is a vast circling of open spaces with a disastrous lack of signage. The layout seems illogical and chaotic, but I will be gracious; they need time to settle. Such a shock, knowing that Marie and I will never see the back offices nor the staff lounge. I don’t even know where it is. As for the staff, most of them have no idea who I am, except for dear Jean Lythgoe, who runs the Local History Room at the age of seventy-seven with no immediate plans for retirement. Marie and I saw no reference books. In fact, we saw no reference desk. There is no romance there, no hardwood.  The chandelier from the old building went to the City Auction.

Yet just days ago, on the Fourth of July, Marie and I drove down to see the fireworks, and we found a parking place close to the new library. We carried our lawn chairs to the area that used to be the esplanade and had a perfect view. Arriving early to ensure this, we had an hour to sit and observe, and as I looked up at the new library, I realized something: it had been constructed in such a way that it appeared to be up on a hill.

A high and holy hill.  As in Sydney Carter's song. A newly-seeded grassy hill, in the exact spot where the lot used to be—the place where Dave Erickson and I parked our cars long ago. And there were children running and shrieking with joy, rolling down that hill the way I used to love to roll down hills with my sisters when we were little girls. Watching those children reminded me of the scene at the end of Steel Magnolias, during the Easter egg hunt when Annelle went into labor. “Shelby, I guess,” she replied, when asked her girl/boy name choices. I almost expected to see Kevin J. O’Connor in his bunny suit, and I laughed out loud. My library! I couldn’t stop smiling.

I looked up again at that gleaming new building on the hill, and something inside me whispered Yes. “My library,” I repeated, this time aloud. Marie didn’t hear me, and it was all right. I felt a sense of peace. Life goes on.. The sacred ground has been set free. They didn’t pave Paradise and put up a parking lot, Joni Mitchell. They rebuilt Jerusalem, a temple that stands where those feet once trod in ancient times, sporting a mustache and black-rimmed glasses, wearing cowboy boots.