Our daughter Thandi meticulously sketched out a diagram showing how the books were to be grouped on our library shelves. First was general fiction. Going clockwise, the general fiction is followed by young adult and then poetry, short story collections, biography, history, travel, religion, science, theater and art.
We have a large collection of children’s book that my daughter has long outgrown, but that we don’t want to surrender. Thandi directed that the children’s books be placed on the bottom shelves, within reach of young guests.
Our library is a circular room created in the upper half of the towering coal silo of what was once a coal-fired, World War II-era steam plant. A concrete platform we had built over the silo’s hopper provides a floor for the library in the top section, with Thandi’s bedroom in the lower half.
Thandi’s middle name is Julia because she has a Julia on each side of her family.
We think Thandi’s attention to detail comes from Fred’s grandmother Julia.
Julia Glick had an artistic streak. In the 1960s she designed her home in Denver’s Hilltop neighborhood. It’s carport roof also sheltered the front door, reached from a short flight of steps. Three steps lead to our front door, which is shaded by a roof stretching from a carport. Like Julie Glick’s, our front door is decorated with vertical elements that resemble the fins on a mid-century car. Fred hunted down a Preso-Matic, a combination lock with buttons instead of a dial, for our door. His grandmother also had a Preso-Matic, trendy “keyless convenience” in the 1960s.
A square of exposed aggregate creates a kind of welcome mat in the concrete in front of our door. Fred remembers concrete squares with exposed aggregate details in his grandmother’s garden.
The other Julia in Thandi’s family was my grandmother. Julia Bryson was a librarian, so probably had a streak of meticulousness herself. Her husband Mem was a brick mason who built Julia a house in Commerce, Georgia.
I remember my grandmother kept her front room dark, making it a cool respite from the Georgia heat.
By the time I took Thandi to visit Commerce in 2017, the house had been knocked down. All that was left was a pile of bricks in the yard. I picked up a brick that Thandi brought home to Denver in her carry-on bag.
During the renovations completed in 2019 that turned the steam plant into our home, I realized the brick from Georgia had a home in Colorado. A rough edge was left after the contractors broke through the brick walls of the main steam plant structure and of the coal silo to connect the two at library level. Plenty of bricks were left over from that process for masons to use to neaten the edges of the passageway that had been created. I asked if a brick from Georgia could be included.
Julia Bryson’s brick is placed to the right, at a spot where you might rest a hand to steady yourself as you enter the library. It’s near the section of art books.
Our daughter, who never got to meet Julia Bryson or Julia Glick, says the library is one of her favorite rooms in this home imbued with the past. More than a name lives on in our Thandi Julia.