As you may know, my older son Allen performed in “Willy Wonka Jr.” as Grandpa Joe. I previously purchased a ticket for Saturday night’s performance but I couldn’t wait. I bought another ticket for the Friday night performance. Can you imagine my delight? As I watched my son come on stage with his gray hair and wrinkled face, I couldn’t help smiling.

When Charlie crawled up in my son’s lap and Allen started singing “Cheer up Charlie,” the tears started to flow. I couldn’t help it; the whole scene looked so sweet. Well, Saturday night I went again. This time I brought several teens with me. Friends of Allen’s drove all the way from Hendersonville for the performance. Luckily I had Lenoir Taylor sitting next to me so that I could have some adult conversation as well. The teens enjoyed the play. Of course I cried again at the “Cheer up Charlie” song.

All the teens came back to my house for the rest of the weekend. I played a good hostess, took the teens to church, fed them lunch, and took them to the beach for the afternoon. Yes, it was rainy that day, but what is a little rain to seven teens when there is a beach to enjoy? As the teens enjoyed splashing around, I sat on a bench listening to the waves crash on the shore. Do you know how relaxing that sound is? I could feel the stress sliding down my arms and landing on the sand at my feet (or was that the rain?).

Now my younger son is able to play baseball for the county. His practice was postponed due to rain. Finally on Tuesday evening, Billy was able to go to baseball practice. I sat in the bleachers proudly watching my son play third base, diving for all the balls that came his way. I shouted from the bleachers, “Way to catch that ball,” as my son dove into the mud catching a line drive. By the end of practice, my son was covered in red mud. I debated whether or not to tie him to the roof for the short drive home but being the good mother that I am, thought it was a better idea to at least take his caked-up, muddy cleats off before he got into my car. I found a plastic bag to drop them in. A mother always comes prepared.

As for the library, budget cuts are terrible. Because of the money that has to be sent back to the state (we have been cut 7 percent with another 2 percent coming before the end of the fiscal year), we have put a hold on purchasing any new books. We are also going to have to stop some standing orders of our reference books. We will be staggering them, purchasing them every other year instead of each year. Some of our magazines will also be stopped due to the annual cost.

Some wonderful residents of the community donate new books to the library so that we can add them to our collection. This helps out tremendously. We have some people send us checks so that we can purchase books in memory of a loved one. The library includes a memorial plate inside the book to honor this individual. Recently books were purchased by Taylor Insurance and Chuck and Shirley Woolley in honor of Marvin Lovett, Harold Lamb and William Alston. Thank you very much.

If anyone would like to donate their best seller that they have purchased and already read, or if a person or organization would like to donate money to purchase material on a specific topic such as children’s books, gardening, cooking, crafts, sports, business, etc, the library will gladly accept them. In these hard economic times, every little bit helps.

Tina Stepp, director of the Robeson County Public Library, can be reached by calling (910) 738-4859 or at tstepp@robesoncountylibrary.com.