Magic, belly dancing, and pleasant surprises...

"Sin brújula, sin tiempo, sin agenda
Inspirado por las leyendas, por historias empaquetadas en lata
Por los cuentos que la luna relata, aprendí a caminar sin mapa
A irme de caminata
Sin comodidades, sin lujos
Protegido por los santos y los brujos."
- "Pa'l Norte" Calle 13 & Orishas

On the second day of the Summer Reading Program, my supervisor's father in law passed away. As soon as she got to the library, they called her to tell her the news, and she had to leave. I got the library at 9:15am to find out that I had to run the program for the rest of the week since Dorothy would be out until Monday.

Drusilla, my other supervisor, drove me to Pageland, the watermelon capital of the world, where we have story time on Tuesdays. We have story time at a fellowship hall across the street because the library is so small all the kids won’t fit. I set up the room and practiced the story I had to read. Dorothy had selected 5 books on quilts, because the activity of the day was to make a quilt with the kids. One of the books talked about a slave girl who made quilts and as they sold her family away, her quilt tradition was passed down to her kids and grandkids. When Dorothy saw it, she quickly rejected the idea and looked for another book, explaining slavery to the kids didn't seem like a good thing to do. I spaced out for a minute, asking how could a place like Cheraw, SC could be so afraid of telling kids what slavery was. And still I thought that it is cruel to expose a kid to that, how do you do it? But how can you keep them from it? She chose another book at the end, which was also the one I read on Tuesday; I was not ready for the whole slavery dilemma.

Dorothy's mother in law had let us use one of her quilts, which I put out for the kids to see. Fifteen minutes before story time, the SouthPoint kids came. They were a group of 15-20 3 and 4 year olds. The teacher seemed to be very strict with them. She told them to sit quietly, to not move, or talk, or laugh. I couldn't understand how she could expect them to be that quiet for 15 minutes, doing absolutely nothing. I began to talk to them because I was really bored and the teacher seemed annoyed at my questions when I tried to make conversation with her. They were outspoken and excited. I made them get up to touch the quilt, while their teacher almost had a heart attack, but they sat back down eventually.

More kids began to get there, when we had around 60, I began the story. I made up half of it because the book was longer than the kids' attention span. They listened quietly. I looked up a couple of times and only saw hundreds of eyes focused on the pictures of the book I held in my hands. I noticed I was reading/talking pretty fast; I knew it because it happens every time I get nervous. When the story ended, we distributed the paint to make stamps on pieces of fabric that would later become a quilt. It was messy and fun; though the SouthPoint teachers only let their kids do one stamp per piece of fabric per child. Some of the kids put so much paint on their stamps that we had to wait hours for them to get dry.

After story time in Pageland ended, Drusilla took me back to Chesterfield. I went on the computer and wasted the afternoon watching youtube videos until it was time to go. I would have tried to go to First Steps, but Shannon was already gone by the time I got back, and there wasn't anything for the Library that I needed to do.

Because I was supposed to go to First Steps on Wednesday and Thursday, Drusilla called Karen and told her about Dorothy's family emergency, meaning that I would stay at the library the whole week. I was happy I didn't need to dress up for the rest of the week since I wasn't working at the office. On Wednesday, Dorothy had scheduled a clown and magician to come to the Jefferson Library. Jefferson is very small, their library is in a white house with three rooms that only opens two days a week. Jennifer, the only other librarian besides Dorothy who has kids, drove me to Jefferson. The clown was almost late and we were nervous when it was about 10:55 and she still wasn't there. The clown ended up being two ladies, Nana Belle, a senior lady, and Joy, her granddaughter. Their performance was good and the kids enjoyed it. They did magic tricks, jokes, and got the kids dancing. We left once they finished and went back to Chesterfield. I walked over to First Steps and worked on the readiness checklist that Karen wanted to do. I read all of the South Carolina Early Learning Standards and other information on how to prepare kids for school. I only had two or three hours to do that, and I wished I had had more time.

Nothing exciting happened that day at the house. My cooking is getting better I guess, and I did math for while. I missed Dorothy, especially because it was the first week of Summer Reading. On Thursday the clown came back, this time to the McBee library, which is in the Railroad Museum. The show was the same as the one from the day before, less funny and less entertaining this time. Jennifer came with me to McBee, but after the show we went back to Chesterfield. There, I thought I'd have time to go the First Steps, but Drusilla had all the pieces of fabric from Pageland that were dry. We spent over an hour attaching them to each other with ribbons of extremely annoying colors. The quilt turned out good, though I doubt any kid recognized the piece of fabric they had stamped. Then, we put together the Chesterfield quilt. My back was hurting from sitting on the floor looking down on the quilt. I didn't get to go to First Steps, which was bad because I had a lot of work to do.

I was glad Jennifer got the clown to come to Cheraw on Friday because they had a large crowd. There were a couple of kids who didn't want to stay for the show because they were scared. And the show was the same as before, 30 minutes longer, but the same.

I worked on the readiness handbook for Karen on Sunday night because we had scheduled a meeting with people from the school district for Thursday, so I had to have a draft by then. I emailed it to her that night, and got her response of Tuesday morning; she couldn’t open the file.

On Monday morning, Dorothy came back! I was happy to see her, but I wasn't sure what to say. We talked about her family and how everyone was doing and how father's day had been for them. Her daughter Stephany was there too. She's always really happy to see me, and she helps me with all I have to do. We didn't have story time because Drusilla's friend, Gypsy, was coming to do belly dancing for the kids. She came earlier than the clown had, which was relieving for me because I didn't want her to be late for story time. She performed well, but a lot of the librarians didn't like it because it was short and lacked dancing moves. I thought it was ok for a library program, since parents wouldn't usually take their kids to see a belly dancer (maybe?). Dorothy was surprised to see the quilts put together, and she liked them. Later on that day we went to Harvest daycare to read to the kids. Dorothy read a book that I fell in love with called "I ain't gonna paint no more". We had the kids stamp pieces of fabric so they could make a quilt.

The next day we went to Pageland to the fellowship hall. Stephany had got braces the day before so she was showing them off to her friends. We had around 60 kids to come see the belly dancer. This time, she was a different girl because Gypsy couldn't make it. She was great with the kids and made them dance a lot. She played a song by Tarkan that reminded of when I was little and took belly dancing classes because we would always dance to that song.

In the middle of her dancing performance something unexpected happened. Two Latino kids came in the fellowship hall with their daddy! Noemi, the older girl sat down next to Stephany and her friend. Josue was shy and didn't even want to sit down with the other kids. I watched them from far away; I wasn't sure what to do because I sensed how nervous the family was about being there. Once the belly dancer left, the kids got to play with hula hoops. Noemi got one, but she was too old to be playing with them and sat bored in the middle of the room; Josue wouldn't let go of his dad. I was feeling crowded because all the kids were playing around me, so I moved away, but ran into the Latino family. My Spanish came out instantly. When I saw Josue holding on to his dad, I had to hold back my tears. I grabbed his little hands, pulled him a little away from his dad, and leaned down to talk to him. I asked him to come play with me, little by little he let go of his dad, holding my hand tightly. I found a hula hoop for him and showed him how to do it. I brought him next to his sister, and she helped him. I stepped back and watched him for a while. The other kids were getting bored, and some were leaving so I had to pick up the hoops they were using. I glanced back to Josue and saw him laughing when his dad joked with him. I talked to them before they left and told them to come back the next week. They were relieved to speak Spanish to me, more relaxed and comfortable and so was I. Dorothy and I went back to Chesterfield, I prepared the reading certificates for the kids, 400 copies that I had to cut and sign.

Today, I finally went to First Steps. We had a staff meeting, where Karen told me we were not doing the readiness handbook because it was going to take too long, meaning that all the work I did for it was pointless. I wasn't mad, but I didn't understand what Karen wanted me to do since I had to spend all week at the library the week before. In any case, she said I was to work on the resource directory for the rest of the summer, which I am about to finish. I spent all day calling agencies to confirm phone numbers, addresses and other details about their services. A couple of rehab centers were trying to get me to register for their programs even when I told them the information was not for me. Other people were annoyed at my questions. Then, others wanted to talk forever.

Nancy, Stormi, Ben, and I went to the Southern Belle for lunch. When we came back to the house we went to Larry's pool across the street. We had good food and Alex Cortese played guitar and sang in Portuguese.

Dorothy was trying to get the belly dancer from Tuesday to come out again tomorrow for the Cheraw library, if she doesn't come, we'll have to read a story instead. Also, I've seen roaches everywhere in the house. I'm less scared of them now, but I feel them everywhere, when I sleep, when I eat, when I shower. I can't stop thinking about them and I keep finding them, now dead because I put out some poison. Does it make me a bad person to kill roaches?