Happy birthday to you … happy birthday to you
Happy birthday dear library … hap …
Hold up, pause audio! Library?! Darn tootin’!
Imagine you’re in a large room — with some 100 people of all ages, from baby to senior, singing the birthday song … to the very place where all are gathered!
Yesterday was the 10th birthday of Queen Creek library.
Queen Creek’s a rural area in the far eastern corner of metro Phoenix, a restful area far from city suffocating sprawl, a place where farmland and irrigated ditches and, sadly, explosive growth prevail.
A place where presumably the library’s arrival to then-little Queen Creek was a very big deal 10 years ago.
As a newbie to the Valley — as greater Phoenix and its outlying areas are known — I’d never been to Queen Creek’s library. (In fact, had not been to Queen Creek apart from driving.) That certainly wouldn’t preclude me from participating in its celebration.
A cause that I very nearly gave up on, truth be known. The traffic – OH MY GAWD! Country roads swollen with evening commuters who’ve discovered they joys of living rural.
Or have they?
As I inched along mired in rudeness — Phoenix drivers are famous for not letting you in for mergings and lane changes — I was aware that every minute stuck in their mud was a moment lost in the magic show underway. I very nearly threw down the cards and baled to the next possible right turn — destination: DOESN’T MATTER — to escape.
Then I was brought back to my better/higher senses by my lifelong love of books and libraries. That singularly fueled my patience and perseverance — through driver muck, wrong turns and winding reroutings that eventually did get me to my destination, thank you Garmin GPS!
The magic show — I was soo excited! — was half over.
But better half than none at all, right?!
What a blast! The magician, Craig Davis, was excellent, spot-on with his sleights of hands plus his fun personality and presentation kept the brat monsters — I mean kids, in abundance — engaged.
No easy trick.
And me too! I so enjoyed his illusions even more than the kids did! Loove magic! Always have. As a girl, I even had a magic kit that I still often think about.
Life eventually beat the magic (and magician) outta me but in its presence, that spark flickers.
And that IS magic!
After the act, a cheerful library staffer led us in an uplifting rendition of Happy Birthday … to the library.
Then came cake — for what’s a birthday sans sugar sugar and sugar still!!
A massive sheet cake decorated with that thick sickeningly sweet white frosting and blue trim and “Happy 10th Birthday to the library” in cursive blue with a photo of the library to boot!
Plus there were cupcakes, vanilla and chocolate, with colorful sprinkles.
When I left , there was but one slice of cake on its paper plate remaining and a dozen or so cupcakes. I considered taking that last slice, it looked so lonely on that big long table.
(But my mother pounded in me to never take the last of anything (or anything at all) so I snagged a vanilla cupcake instead just to ensure my sugar soared into a stratosphere.)
“Wow, the crowd really went through that giant cake!” I commented to a staffer.
“Yeah and that’s the second one today!”
So Queen Creek surely got sugared up.
So, the celebration, was it worth the horrendous slog? Yes.
The kiddie brats? Briefly.
The sugar high? Nah but exceptions are called for upon certain occasions.
The magic show? Indeed!
To sing (really badly) in group song to a library? Yup, even that.
Every queen’s got to have a crown. Queen Creek is no different. This one’s for you, library. You wore it well and deservingly. You’re Queen for a Day — and in my book, every day.
Long Live Libraries!
Allelujah, Arizona! 
Never attended a library’s birthday, although I did attend one’s opening, so I guess I can relate 🙂
I have to admit that I always found libraries to be a refuge to the swirling chaos of my life. Even when I was young(er), I would try to head there every week-end, sometimes with my dad, but most of the time, walking over there by myself. Even on the coldest Winter day, I would take the trek.
Could be why, I’ve always enjoy the cold weather so much…
@longeye – Could be. Those associations we make when we’re young frequently stick with us through a lifetime. Yours with the library is winter-based, mine’s summer. (My formative years were in southern California, not exactly Snow Country!) Every summer the library hosted a reading program. Read a book and your paper marker advances a station on the great big wall. Achieve them all and then what, I don’t recall. A party? Or simply personal reward? — which of course supercedes a party for a genuine reader. Winter is yours, summer mine. 🙂