Every Tuesday at 3 p.m., Mrs. Ellis, the silver-haired librarian, would slide a handwritten note into a random book before reshelving it. No one knew it was her. “You’re braver than you think,” she’d scribble on lemon-yellow paper, tucking it into a thriller. “The world needs your laugh,” nestled inside a joke book. She’d done this for 12 years, since her husband passed…
One rainy afternoon, 14-year-old Marco flipped open a dusty atlas and found a note: “Someone out there is proud of you.” He stuffed it into his pocket. That week, his mom had been laid off, and he’d been hiding lunch money in her purse. The note stayed with him, creased but unthrown, like a secret friend…
He started visiting the library daily, hunting for more notes. Mrs. Ellis watched him quietly, noticing how he’d linger in the cookbook aisle (his mom’s dream was to open a bakery). One day, she “accidentally” dropped a note near his feet: “Follow the recipe, kid. You’ve got the ingredients.”
Marco baked her a lumpy banana loaf the next week. “For the note person,” he mumbled, pushing the tin across the desk. Mrs. Ellis smiled. “They’ll love it.”
Years passed. Marco’s mom opened her bakery, “Yellow Note Cakes,” with recipes pinned beside customer orders. Graduation day, Marco left a note in the atlas: “Thank you for seeing me.”
Mrs. Ellis retired last month. At her farewell party, the library displayed a clothesline strung with hundreds of yellow notes—found in textbooks, romance novels, even a gardening guide. A nurse wrote: “This got me through night shifts.” A single dad: “I kept your ‘You’re enough’ note in my wedding ring box.”
Now, the library’s new intern, Marco’s little sister, starts her mornings the same way: watering plants, shelving books, and hiding scraps of sunshine…
Mrs. Ellis still comes in on Tuesdays. “Found one!” she’ll say, waving a fresh note someone left for her…
Funny, isn’t it? How words meant to heal others somehow heal us too…
Credit: SYJ
Photo by RDNE Stock project