I put the first shelf outside our house in Phibsborough because I was lonely and too proud to say it out loud. It was the spring after my father died, and the terrace felt different without him leaning on the gate, giving weather reports to anyone who passed. He had worked near the Mater for years and knew half of Dublin by face, if not by name. I had inherited his house, his old biscuit tins full of screws, and a silence that seemed to follow me from room to room.
The library was really just a painted wooden box, made from an old cabinet door and two shelves my neighbour, Eamonn, helped me cut in the back garden. I stencilled “Take a book, leave a book” on the front in crooked blue letters. The first books were Dad’s: Maeve Binchy, Roddy Doyle, a battered Seamus Heaney collection, and a gardening book with his notes in the margins. I expected nothing. Maybe a few students from Grangegorman would take a paperback. Maybe it would be ignored. I only wanted to feel that something of him was still meeting people at the gate.
For the first week, nothing happened except the rain got in. Then one morning, on my way to get milk, I found a copy of The Very Hungry Caterpillar sitting beside Dad’s Heaney. Inside was a note written in purple crayon: “Thank you. My mam read this to me.” I stood there in my slippers, holding that little book like it was a message from another planet.
After that, the shelf began to breathe. A woman from two doors down left crime novels in neat stacks. A Deliveroo cyclist, who used to lock his bike near the corner, started taking English grammar books and leaving Polish children’s stories. Someone placed a jar of pencils there with a sign saying, “For homework emergencies.” On match days at Croke Park, strangers leaned over the box as if it were a stall at a market, arguing gently about which book was worth the bus ride home.
Then came the morning I found the door ripped off and half the books thrown along the footpath. A few were soaked in the gutter. One had been stamped on. I was angrier than I expected to be, not because the box was valuable, but because it felt like someone had laughed at the small, tender thing we had made together. I dragged the broken pieces inside and decided that was the end of it. Dublin was too busy, too tired, too hard on soft ideas.
That evening, there was a knock. It was Eamonn with his toolbox. Behind him stood Mrs. Kavanagh from number 18, a Syrian father named Samer from the flats nearby, two teenagers I recognised from the bus stop, and a little girl holding the ruined caterpillar book against her chest. Nobody made a speech. Eamonn just said, “We’ll put it back stronger.”
They did. Samer brought a sheet of clear plastic from his job. The teenagers painted flowers on the sides, brilliant red and yellow against the grey wall. Mrs. Kavanagh made tea and told everyone where to stand, as if she had been forewoman of the street all her life. By nine o’clock, the little library was back outside, sturdier than before, with a small solar light fixed above it. Someone added a new sign underneath mine: “This belongs to all of us.”
The strange thing is, that was when the library stopped being about books. It became an excuse to notice each other. People who had lived on the same road for fifteen years learned names. A retired teacher began helping children with reading on Saturdays, sitting on a folding chair by the gate. A young man who had been sleeping rough near Bless
Note: Please be aware that these are written in confidentiality and there is not reference or mention of any real people and their sentiments here. Every incident and Story tends to be emotional so please read at your own emotional risk. Website is not responsible for anything related. HumansofDublin.io is not related to the photography project HumansofDublin by Peter Varga
