Day after day after day, the new library rises with exemplary efficiency. All those who put this massive project together—on budget and on time—need a medal and a bonus in a world that usually awards neither. Watching it go up, I feel undeserved pride, like someone who takes credit for the success of their sports team while they are eating salsa in front of the television. That’s my home run! My ticker tape parade!
I check the state of this remarkable construction project whenever I’m pumping gas across the street on Concord Avenue. Usually it doesn’t take long, because usually the gas tank doesn’t require much filling. A certain percentage of drivers—often the slow ones no other driver wants to be caught behind— grow anxious when their dashboard gauge dips below half-full. I am among them.
But for some unrecalled reason, on this day the tank was almost empty. It had caused great stress, and more pressing tasks were tabled while I drove to the gas station.
One hand on a hip and the other on the gas hose, I assessed the progress of my project, my sports team. Metal fencing meant to be unscalable had gone up around the construction site. Behind the fence, workers were erecting the second and third library floors; scaffolding was rising, but the building itself was still wall-less and stairless. It presented a vaguely unclothed view, like someone parading naked in public.
$27.59. $34.75. The tank was filling slowly. At around $36.17, I noticed, high on the top floor of construction across the street, a line of graffiti that had been spray-painted onto a metal beam. I checked my vision, which isn’t as sharp as it could be (though also not the reason I drive so slowly), and squinted. Yes, it was spray paint up high, and yes, that was “Happy Birthday.” I think it was for someone named Patty and I think it was in an unforgettable shade of green.
The accomplishment was impossible and yet obviously accomplished: someone had found a way over the fence and up a skeleton of a building. Of course there was no signature, only speculation. Frustrated artist? High schooler convinced he will live forever? Spouse who’d forgotten anniversary flowers? I confess to feeling admiration for the fearlessness while wanting to hurl the book at the criminal.
Since then, library construction work has moved forward reliably, with the medal-worthy efficiency we have grown used to. The last time my car needed gas, that painted beam had disappeared under an outer wall. In the not-distant future (because this project is coming in on budget and on time!), library patrons will be sitting next to the wall with no knowledge of what lies beneath. I think of it as the contents of a time capsule launched into space: an LP of the Beatles, a copy of Shakespeare’s sonnets, the Bible, and cheerful but illegal greeting to Patty that will not be opened in our lifetimes.
Elissa Ely writes about seniors/baby boomers for The Belmont Voice. She is a community psychiatrist.
