Shapeshifting

I sit outside by the fountain on my lunch breaks, the one out in front of the hospital that's big enough to swim in. Not dive in, and ok maybe not even accomplish a decent dog-paddle, but my point is that it's big and I'm always tempted to wade in it, and maybe lay on my back and float while kids throw pennies in. It's made of rectangular cement blocks, all different sizes. From the other side of the street it looks like a city in Star Wars, with a waterfall spilling from the long rectangle at the back.

But it hasn't been running since the hurricane hit. Usually the water is clear white and sparkles in the sun, which is why I'm always tempted to jump in, but it's been green since I got back last Friday. It amazes, depresses and impresses me that in two days a gushing fount can become a stagnant puddle of mildew.  I was bummed when I first saw the fountain that way. I think it was the stillness of it, more than the mildew,that bothered me. I sit in a windowless, gray office that my coworkers and I refer to as a cave within a cave. To get to my work space you have to go through one colorless, windowless office and into the next. I need to be outside on my breaks with the sunshine and the water, and when I watch it run it reminds me that I'm alive, that something inside of me is flowing and colorful.

It's almost a week since I got back to work and it still hasn't been cleaned. I still sit by it though. Because it's beginning to change shape. Dragon flies hover over the surface, and tadpoles are squiggling underneath. In one week, it's become a whole other world - uninhabitable for me and but very much alive. I watched the tadpoles swimming today, the way I wish I could do in the fountain without being arrested or committed, and I wondered if they knew why they were there. If they knew that they were born in that spot because a hurricane had come and made it possible.

I heard a story once on Radio Lab about how when a whale dies it sinks to the bottom of the ocean and for the next several decades its decaying body becomes a vibrant world. First the big beasts, like sharks and snow crabs and things eat away at it, phase two is the enrichment opportunist phase where the whale's soft tissue left over from the scavengers is eaten up by smaller things. Phase three is the sulphophilic stage where sulphur mussels, clams and some microscoptic things live off of the nutrients in the bones. The show said that one whale can live 50-75 years, and in its afterlife it can support a community of organisms for another 50-75 years. A whale dying and falling to the bottom of the ocean is called a Whale Fall. I love that. When I die,  unless I die in the water, I won't float gracefully. It will have to be called "Woman Fall Over" or "Woman Trip in Front of Tractor." Wait, that's a headline. But you see what I mean.

What I mean is, life never really stops moving. It just changes shape when it has to.

After I got off of work, I got into my car and immediately began to change shape - the dress shoes and the cardigan come off, the earrings came out, and the "yes ma'am" tone in my voice was replaced by an imitation of Joan Jett singing "Mama Weer All Crazee Now."  I thought about the dragonflies and the tadpoles and hoped they'd find another place before the hospital got around to scrubbing the fountain. I wondered if they knew, just by instinct, that there's always another place to go.

ps - you can geek out on Radio Lab here: http://www.radiolab.org/  It's everything that a show about things like decaying whales should be.

Kenny's Ghost

Well, it's a few days later, but it feels like longer. The kids and I are safe and back at home, but I know that a lot of other people aren't so lucky, like the entire city of Laplace and Plaquemines Parish. Hope everybody's ok, though displaced.

So Monday night I packed my three kids, the dog (Lily), the rabbit (Ginger), the hamster (Fluffy McFluffersons - Fluffy for short), and the hermit crab (Super Dude) into my little Ford Focus (Madame Blueberry) and headed off in a undisclosed eastern direction to stay with my friends who I will call Hailey and Sven. I was going to call them Madame Blueberry and Super Dude, but those names are already taken. Their house got some tropical storm force winds and a lot of rain, but miraculously never lost power AND! despite the rain we were able to swim and I discovered a love for swimming in the rain. This is the kind of thing that you don't know you like until you do it, kind of like eating escargot. You think "Would I like snails?" and you realize that you can't say for sure until you try. Well, maybe that's just me. There are some who I am sure would like at a plate of snails, or even just think about it and they know, they just feel deep in the pit of their nausea, that they would not like it. I looked at rain pelting on the surface of the pool and thought, "This is pretty. I want to be with the pretty, and I don't care if it's cold."

Of course, I had to do this on my lunch break because I worked remotely from my computer while I was away. Luckily I have a job where I can do that. Um, those of you who were flooded out, can't work and don't have electricity right now, please don't hate me for working in the comfort of an air-conditioned undisclosed eastern location with a pool...You don't like me anyway? Then stop reading my blog, silly!

I got back into town on Thursday and was told to report to the Northshore hospital campus instead of my regular office. So after driving back from Hailey and Sven's I dropped off the kids and the beasts at my aunt's and reported to work in my shorts, T-shirt and sneakers with no socks. The nurse who I reported to didn't seem to care that I was dressed this way or that I smelled like a combination of McDonald's, dog, and sweat.  She gave me an ID bracelet and led me to a set of elevators.
"Now, let's see," she said, after hitting the "up" button, "Which one is Kenny in?"
The elevator door on the left slid open. She shrugged.
"Oh well, I think it's this one, but he's nice." We stepped in and before I could ask she told me, "Kenny's our ghost. They call him Kenneth, but I call him Kenny. Think he died here. Anyway, sometimes he messes with us, but he's alright."
"He only lives in the elevator?"
"Yep." She looked over at me. "I'm serious. You believe all that?"
"Uh, sure. Sometimes."
"I thought it was all bull before. But I believe it now."
"Since Kenny?"
"Yep."
I wondered if this was some sort of initiation thing. Like if she was going to hit the emergency button and play with me. But she didn't seem to be messing around. She was too self-conscience about whether or not I thought she was crazy.
So to be polite I looked around the elevator and said, "Hi Kenny."
Then we hit the third floor and either Kenny's ghost, or the mechanics of the elevator, the inner workings of which I don't understand any more than the afterlife, opened the doors and let us out.
Luckily I didn't have to report there the next day.

So today is my first real day off since I've been home. And now! To clean the debris around my house! And fumigate Madame Blueberry. She still smells like road trip. Like a road trip with sweaty, nervous tall people and their animals. I may have to clean it with fire.

Here is the best 80's song ever for those of you who've spent the whole week living out of your Cars