Not too long after I learn to read in English, I am perusing a shelf in the public library. I am here by myself. I reach for a book just above my head, pull it down, and start reading it.

There is a young man sitting in a college classroom. He is listening to a teacher who is drawing diagrams on the blackboard. It is about Logic. I find this discussion of Logic fascinating. I keep reading. In the book, the air raid sirens start ringing. The young man is annoyed. He follows his classmates down the stairs and into the street. He separates himself from them and crawls into a basement shelter.

I decide to check the book out. I want to read until the author gets back to the discussion on Logic. I take it to the front desk. 

The librarian won’t let me check it out.

“Why not?” I ask her.

“It’s for grown ups” she replies.

I am outraged.

I walk home, a short block or two in this tiny town in Missouri where my father teaches playwriting at the college.

“Daddy!!!” 

(…famous prelude to numerous complaints)

“The librarian won’t let me check out a book!!!”

He is sitting at his desk with some files in front of him. He deftly slips a paper back into a folder. He peers down at me through his thick glasses. 

He pulls a thick book off the shelf and hands it to me, open somewhere in the middle. 

The Grimm Brothers Fairy Tales.

“Read this to me,” he says.

Sixty years later, my son pulls the exact story off his cell phone.  I recognize it immediately. Little One Eye, Little Two Eyes, and Little Three Eyes.

Dad stops me and asks me who these three characters are. They remind me of me and my two siblings.

“So who has Five Eyes?” he asks me. 

I stare back at him, baffled. Another riddle I can’t answer.

He asks me again. 

“Who has Five Eyes?”

“Daddy! Only a monster would have five eyes!”

He exhales something between a laugh and a snort. He stands up abruptly, takes the book from me, and closes it with a snap. 

“Remember that,” he instructs me. 

“How old are you?”

“Daddy! You know I’m six!”

“Remember THAT.”

He consults his wristwatch. He calls to Mommy in the kitchen.  “I’m taking Anna to the library.  We’ll be back in 20 minutes. “

We drive the short couple of blocks. 

He says hello to the librarian, who has one glass eye. I stand there silently, still puzzling over the five eyes riddle. He tells her he works at the college. He points to me.

“This is my daughter, Anna. You can let her check out any book in the library.”

I go look for the book in question, but it’s not there. I ask her about it. She tells me it’s been checked out. I look for it later, but I never find it. Eventually I forget the details of the fairy tale. The book I wanted remains as a cryptic note: “bomb shelters and logic” in lists copied and recopied for years to come. 

We’re always in a new house,  and I’m always in a new bedroom,  but I have my little notebooks.  And I have my lists, and, when I can get his attention,  Daddy helps me fill in the blanks.  

And I can check out any book in the library.