This is a story about a small public library in a small town in western Massachusetts, a specific shelf located behind the library’s circulation desk, and the two hundred and fourteen objects that currently sit on that shelf — none of which the library has ever officially accepted, none of which have been claimed, and none of which anyone working at the library can quite explain the presence of.
The library — which I will not name, at the request of its staff — serves a town of approximately three thousand two hundred people in the hill country of western Massachusetts. It is housed in a small brick building that was constructed in 1926. It has a main reading room, a small children’s section, a periodicals corner, one meeting room in the basement, and a circulation desk located just inside the front door. It is staffed, at the time of this writing, by one full-time head librarian, two part-time librarians, and a rotating group of approximately six volunteers.
The head librarian — I will call her Beryl, because she chose the name — has worked at the library for twenty-two years. She has been the head librarian for eleven of those years.
She has, in that time, watched the shelf behind the circulation desk fill.
The shelf itself
I want to describe the shelf carefully, because it is the specific setting for everything else in this story.
The shelf is a single wooden shelf that runs along the wall behind the circulation desk. It is approximately six feet long. It sits at approximately shoulder height, above a small counter where the library’s book-return bin used to be located before the library purchased a modern automated returns unit in 2019.
The shelf, in the original architectural plans of the library, was intended to hold decorative items — the kind of small ceramic or wooden objects that librarians in the 1920s apparently kept behind circulation desks. For most of the library’s history, the shelf held a small collection of vintage children’s books, a framed photograph of the library’s founder, and a small brass bell that patrons could ring if the librarian was not immediately visible.
The framed photograph is still on the shelf. So is the bell. The vintage children’s books have, at some point in the last twenty years, been relocated to the small children’s section.
The rest of the shelf — approximately four and a half feet of it — is now occupied by two hundred and fourteen objects.
The objects, in Beryl’s careful account, have accumulated over the past nine years.
None of them, in that time, have been claimed.
The first object
The first object, in the reconstructed timeline that Beryl has slowly assembled, arrived in the spring of 2017.
Beryl was working the circulation desk on a Tuesday afternoon in late April. A patron — a woman Beryl estimated to be in her early sixties, whom Beryl had seen in the library several times over the years but did not know by name — approached the desk. She was holding, in her hand, a small object.
The object, in Beryl’s description, was a specific kind of small keychain. It was made of leather. It was in the shape of a small four-leaf clover. It was, Beryl has told me, worn but well-cared-for.
The patron, according to Beryl, said the following: “I found this in the parking lot on my way in. Someone must have dropped it. I don’t know what to do with it.”
Beryl, according to Beryl, considered several possible responses.
She has told me she considered saying: “You should leave it in the parking lot in case the person comes back for it.” She has told me she rejected this response because the keychain was small and might get stepped on or lost.
She has told me she considered saying: “You should take it to the town hall. They have a small lost-and-found.” She has told me she rejected this response because the town hall is fifteen minutes’ drive from the library and the woman had already come inside.
She has told me she considered saying: “I’ll take it. If someone comes looking for it, I’ll give it to them.” She has told me this is what she said.
She has told me she took the keychain from the woman. She placed it on the shelf behind the desk. She placed it, specifically, next to the small brass bell.
She has told me that in the weeks that followed, no one came to the library asking about a small leather keychain shaped like a four-leaf clover.
The keychain, at the time of this writing, is still on the shelf. It has been there for nine years and three months.
The pattern that developed
The pattern that developed, in Beryl’s account, developed without anyone deciding it would.
Approximately three weeks after the first keychain arrived, a different patron — a man Beryl had also seen in the library many times but did not know by name — approached the desk holding a small object.
The object, in Beryl’s description, was a specific kind of pocket-sized wallet. It was empty. There was no identification in it. There was no money in it. There were no cards in it. There was only the wallet itself.
The patron, according to Beryl, said the following: “I found this on the sidewalk on Elm Street. Someone must have dropped it. Somebody told me you keep things like this.”
Beryl, according to Beryl, was — in her own words — “confused by the second sentence for a long moment.”
She has told me she did not, at the time, ask the patron who had told him she kept things like this.
She has told me she took the wallet. She placed it on the shelf, next to the four-leaf clover keychain.
She has told me that in the weeks that followed, no one came looking for a small empty wallet.
She has told me that in the month after that, a third patron arrived — a teenager, this time, holding a small child’s mitten she had found in the town green.
She has told me a fourth patron arrived a few weeks later, with a small silver earring she had found on a picnic bench.
By the end of the summer of 2017, in Beryl’s careful reconstruction, thirteen small objects had accumulated on the shelf.
By the end of 2017, twenty-eight small objects.
By the end of 2019, sixty-seven.
The shelf now, at the time of this writing, holds two hundred and fourteen objects.
None of them has ever been claimed.
The current contents
I asked Beryl, in our second phone conversation, to describe the current contents of the shelf.
She has told me she has, over the past two years, been keeping a careful list. The list is written in a small notebook she keeps in a drawer of the circulation desk. She has told me she started keeping the list, in 2023, when she realized that she had — in her own account — “lost track of what the shelf contained. And I did not want to be, in the specific way of a librarian who catalogs everything, the person who did not know what was on the specific shelf right behind me.”
The list, in Beryl’s summary, includes the following.
Forty-seven keys. Of various sizes and shapes. Some appear to be house keys. Some appear to be car keys. Some are too small or too intricate to be either. None of them, in the past nine years, has been claimed.
Twenty-nine keychains. Some contain keys. Some do not. Some appear to be handmade. Some appear to have come, originally, from souvenir stores.
Nineteen individual earrings. All are missing their partners. Several of them, Beryl has told me, are — in her assessment — “of clearly noticeable emotional value,” meaning they appear to be handmade, or to contain small stones that are not, in her judgment, of significant monetary value but are of a quality that suggests the earring belonged to someone specific.
Fourteen small wallets. All empty. None contain any identification.
Nine pairs of children’s mittens. Twelve individual gloves.
Seven small stuffed animals. Six of them are of a size that would fit in a small child’s hand. One of them is a small bear approximately eight inches tall.
Six phone chargers. Three of them are for iPhones. Two are for various Android models. One is for a phone that Beryl believes has not been manufactured since approximately 2012.
Four small notebooks. Three of them are blank. One of them, Beryl has told me, contains handwritten notes in what appears to be a specific kind of stenographic shorthand that neither Beryl nor any of the volunteers has been able to identify. She has told me she has never, in six years, opened the notebook past the first page.
Three water bottles. Two thermoses. One pair of prescription reading glasses. One small ceramic figurine of what appears to be a cat. One small painted rock. One coin from a country that Beryl has, in a small careful investigation, identified as Belgium in the 1970s.
One small handmade card that reads, in careful handwriting, “I am so sorry. Please forgive me.” The card is not signed. The card has no envelope. Beryl has told me she has, in the four years the card has been on the shelf, thought about it more than she has thought about any other object on the shelf.
Two hundred and fourteen items, in total. Zero of them, in nine years, have been retrieved.
Why they have not been retrieved
I asked Beryl, in each of our three conversations, why she thinks the objects have not been retrieved.
She has told me she has, in the nine years since the shelf started filling, developed several theories.
The first theory is that the objects are, in most cases, of low material value. A single earring is not, in the strict economic sense, worth much. An empty wallet is worth what an empty wallet is worth. A pair of children’s mittens can be replaced at any store. She has told me that people, in general, do not spend a great deal of time trying to recover objects that they can easily replace.
The second theory is that the objects have often been lost by people who are not, in the specific way of small-town residents, likely to systematically search for them. A tourist passing through town who loses a keychain in the library parking lot has no particular reason to return to a specific small library in a specific small Massachusetts town to look for it. A visitor to a family member in the town, who loses a small notebook on a bench, does not know that the notebook has been carefully placed on a specific shelf behind a specific desk. The specific network of information that would let a person find their lost object at Beryl’s library does not, in most cases, exist.
The third theory — which Beryl has told me is the one she has, in recent years, been most drawn to — is more complicated.
The theory is that the objects, in the specific way that Beryl has come to understand them, are not primarily objects that have been lost. The objects are, in a specific way, objects that have been given up.
She has told me: “I have, in nine years of watching this shelf, come to believe that most of the objects on it were not, in the strict sense, dropped by accident. I believe most of them were left somewhere deliberately, or set down and walked away from, or forgotten in a way that was — in some quiet way — permitted by the person forgetting them.”
She has told me: “I have come to believe, over nine years, that the specific set of objects that end up on this shelf are the specific set of objects that people have, without exactly meaning to, let go of. The keychain that was in a coat pocket for a long time. The pair of reading glasses that were used every day and then, one day, not needed. The card that someone wrote but did not know how to give. The coin from Belgium that someone had been carrying since a trip in the 1970s. The small child’s mitten that was, presumably, part of a pair that the child had, one specific week, outgrown.”
She has told me: “The objects on this shelf are, in the specific way I have come to understand them, the small material sediment of the specific act of letting go. They are the things people have, without ceremony, decided they no longer needed. They have been brought to me by other people who found them and did not know what to do with them. I have taken them, and I have placed them on the shelf, and they have stayed there. Because the specific thing they represent is the specific thing they represent. They are, in the strict sense, no longer wanted.”
She has told me: “I did not decide to become the person who holds the specific unwanted objects of my town. I have, however, over nine years, become that person. The shelf is the specific place in this town where the small objects that are no longer needed by anyone quietly accumulate. Nobody has claimed a single one of them, in nine years, because nobody wants them. They are on the shelf because they belong on the shelf. They belong on the shelf because there is nowhere else in the town for them to belong.”
What the library has done about it
I asked Beryl, in our final conversation, what the library has, over nine years, done about the accumulation.
She has told me the library has, in her own careful phrasing, “not done anything about it.”
She has told me the shelf has not been mentioned in any of the library’s official documents. The shelf is not listed on the library’s website. The shelf is not included in any of the tours the library gives to elementary school classes. The shelf is not, in the strict sense, an official function of the library.
She has told me that the library board of trustees, in nine years of meetings, has never once discussed the shelf.
She has told me she does not know for certain whether the board is aware of the shelf. She has told me she suspects some of them are. She has told me she has, so far, chosen not to bring it up in a meeting.
She has told me she has been asked, on three separate occasions, by patrons who had noticed the shelf, whether the library had considered — in the phrasing of one patron — “doing something about all that stuff.”
She has told me she has, in each of the three occasions, given the same answer.
She has told me the answer is: “The shelf is fine. I know what is on it. I know how it got there. I know that nobody has come looking for any of it. I keep an eye on it. If, at some point, someone comes to the library looking for a small leather keychain shaped like a four-leaf clover, I will know exactly where it is.”
She has told me: “So far, nobody has.”
She has told me: “This is, I have decided, an entirely acceptable state of affairs.”
The one moment she almost cleared it
There is, in Beryl’s account, one moment in the past nine years when she came close to clearing the shelf.
The moment occurred in the spring of 2022.
The library was, at that time, undergoing a small renovation. The renovation involved painting the walls of the main reading room, replacing the carpet in the periodicals corner, and — this is what mattered — removing and reinstalling the circulation desk in a slightly updated configuration.
Beryl has told me that in the week before the renovation began, she considered — for approximately four days — the possibility of clearing the shelf while the desk was being moved.
She has told me the argument in favor of clearing was practical. The shelf, at that point, had held approximately one hundred and forty-five items. The items would need to be moved anyway, in order for the shelf itself to be moved. Beryl would need to spend time carefully packing each of them and, after the renovation, carefully replacing each of them. It would be, in the practical sense, easier to simply throw them away.
She has told me the argument against clearing was less easy to name.
She has told me she has, in the four days of consideration, tried to articulate the argument against.
She has told me the closest she came to articulating it was the following.
She has told me: “The objects on the shelf are, in the specific sense I have come to understand, not the library’s objects. They are the town’s objects. They have been brought to the library by patrons of the library who found them and did not know what else to do with them. They have been placed on the shelf by me, in my professional capacity as the librarian. They have, over the years, quietly accumulated. They belong to the specific arrangement that has, without anyone’s decision, developed between the library and the town.”
She has told me: “I did not have the right to throw them away.”
She has told me: “The specific fact that no individual person had claimed any of them did not mean, in the sense I had come to understand, that they were unclaimed. They were claimed by the accumulated agreement of the town that they should be there. They were claimed by the specific quiet arrangement that had, over years, resulted in their being there. I was, in some way I could not fully explain, not authorized to end that arrangement on my own.”
She has told me she then, in the days before the renovation began, carefully packed each of the one hundred and forty-five items into a small labeled cardboard box. She has told me she then, after the renovation was complete, carefully replaced each of them onto the shelf in the same positions they had occupied before the renovation.
She has told me the entire process took her approximately four hours of her own time, off the clock.
She has told me she has never regretted it.
What this is
I have, in the weeks since I first heard about the shelf, thought about the specific and quiet way that small-town institutions can, without anyone deciding it, come to hold the accumulated small material weight of the community they serve. Beryl’s library is not, in the strict sense, in the business of holding unclaimed objects. It has, however, over nine years, become the specific place in a specific small town where unclaimed objects — the small material sediment of a community’s ongoing life — quietly accumulate. This accumulation was not planned. It was not designed. It has been sustained, at every step, by the specific decision of the librarian not to end it.
I do not know exactly what to make of this. I think it is, in the specific way of small quiet arrangements between institutions and the communities they serve, honest. I think it is, in the specific way of arrangements that develop without being decided, sustainable. I think it is, in the specific way of things that are held not because they are wanted but because they need somewhere to be, a small kindness. (For a related earlier piece on the small quiet ways that specific institutions and specific arrangements can, without anyone deciding it, quietly hold the small accumulated weight of a community’s ongoing life, see the Wattalife story about the family bakery in central Pennsylvania whose industrial oven has been running continuously since 1974.)
Beryl told me, at the end of our final conversation, that a new object had arrived at the library the previous week. She has told me the object was brought in by a patron she recognized — a man in his mid-forties who has been coming to the library for approximately eight years. The object, in Beryl’s description, was a small folded piece of paper. The paper was, in the patron’s account, a note that had been left on the windshield of his car in the library parking lot. The note had been written in careful handwriting.
The note, according to Beryl, read: “I am sorry. I know I hit your car. I do not have the money to pay for it. I have been thinking about it for three weeks. I am so sorry.”
The note was not signed.
The patron, according to Beryl, brought the note into the library and said: “I don’t want to keep it. I don’t want to throw it away. I don’t know what to do with it.”
Beryl took the note. She placed it on the shelf, next to the handmade card that reads “I am so sorry. Please forgive me.”
She has told me she has, in the days since, thought about the two notes.
She has told me she has, in the days since, thought about how the shelf now contains, without her having designed it, a specific small collection of the town’s unresolved apologies.
She has told me she has, in the days since, decided that this is, in some way she cannot fully articulate, entirely appropriate.
She has told me: “The shelf holds what the town needs it to hold. I do not, at this stage, question what belongs on it. I only make sure it stays there, for whatever purpose it is quietly serving, for as long as it needs to.”
She has told me: “This is, at fifty-eight, the specific version of the work I have decided I am doing.”
She has told me: “I am, tentatively, at peace with it.”
—
Margot Hale is the editor of Wattalife. She has, since reporting this story, been considering the specific small objects and small arrangements she herself has, over the years, been quietly holding for other people without ever quite deciding to. She has identified three of them. She has decided to continue holding all three. She has decided that this, in some way she is not going to try to fully articulate, is one of the specific ways adults are, without ceremony, useful to each other.