Misadventures

On the water, with the pewter sea stretching all around me, half in, feet warm in the kayak, I'm something close to happy. There are islands to stop at, with the mangroves stretching toward you like thought, and perfect shells to find. The sea takes all things and changes them, folds them in upon itself, absorbs grows, rolls on. If you sit still long enough, it takes you, too. This year, the trip was cold. 40 degrees. We huddled in our ski sweaters and long underwear and wool hats on the beaches, made camp, ate sardines on crackers. Nothing better than a cold white beach, feet you can't feel and sardines. And rum. We had a bottle of rum. You know, it keeps you going. Everything went wrong on this trip--last year, it was the Blue Lagoon. This year: Quest for Fire.
Got stuck in Atlanta for a day (don't take AirTran), so a day late getting on the water. Then, with the cold, we must have paddled faster, so we made Everglades City an entire day sooner than we expected. We paddle up the river into town, looking at the tin roofed houses lining the water. We paddle by an old white clapboard hotel with yellow shutters. There are a few sort of hale looking people in their 60's sitting on the wide screened-in porch, sipping coffee.
"That's an interesting place," Jay comments.
"The Rod and Gun Club," I say, reading the wooden sign out front as we pass. They watch us as we go by. There's no place to get out so we paddle back and take out our kayak out at the park service ramp. I start crying. I am so happy out there, I never want to go back to the world. I can't describe it. The clear water on the sand, absorbing myself in the little things. It's like being a child again. I don't care if it's cold and wet. I feel like I'm breaking up with a lover. I can't explain this to Jay. I can't say: no we weren't out there long enough and now our complicated lives are all going to wash back over us and I'm going to start planning everything in 15 minute increments and writing down every penny I spend and not using purple pens on Tuesdays. And there's going to be the other Halie and you not being in love once we get back to Paloma. I wanted to stay out another night. Filthy, dehydrated. I just cry and cry. I can't stop.
"Let's take a walk." Jay says.
We walk into the park, sit on a picnic table. I can't stop crying. He holds my hand. I'll say one thing for Jay: he's really good when I'm crazy.
"Do you want to go out another night? I'll go out another night if you want to, but don't you think we're pretty beat? I'm really exhausted."
"I'm not tired at all." I say.
"Okay. Let's go back out there."
But I know I'm tired. He buys me a bag of cheese doodles. We pack up the kayak, leave it by the side of the fence at the park service headquarters. I feel as if I'm not even a person, I wander around the tourists like some sort of swamp animal.
There are some kayakers from Tennessee who take pity on us and give us a ride into town. I had started talking with the woman and told her I was a nurse. It's funny how you can just look like any old hell but once someone finds out you're a nurse, they trust you. We ask them if they know any good places to stay in Everglades City.
"We're staying at the Rod and Gun Club." The woman offers. She's a dietician from Knoxville. In her fifties, in really good shape. What is it about dieticians? Well, I guess they know how to eat right. "But they only take cash."
"That's not a private club?" I ask.
"We saw it on our way in." Jay says.
"We'll drop you off there. See if you like it."
We arrive at the hotel. And step into another world. The Knoxville people disappear. There's no one around. The interior of the hotel is made from native cypress, dark, polished, and immaculately clean. The light filters in through the louvred shutters on the windows--just like the ones Lauren Bacall closes against the hurricane in Key Largo. There are ancient dead animals on the wall, very poorly preserved. A christmas tree. An empty dining room. No one's around.
"Hello?" we ask.
That's my 1/2 hour. To be continued....

Fardels

Things hurt all out of proportion.
It's because I'm so stressed out I guess.
I'm going to talk about everything that's wrong today.
Yesterday, I went to the gym to do my 20 minutes of aerobic exercise as prescribed by the Body for Life program. I had skipped Thursday and Friday. And somehow, I've managed to gain two pounds since last week. Normally, I walk around my neighborhood, but it was 13 degrees, so I decided to go to the gym and use the elliptical trainer. I picked the one at the end of the row and started up. Next to me was a really buff black guy. He had his I-Pod plugged into the machine (these are really nice machines) and I saw his playlist. The song he was listening to was "Let's all get drunk as fuck." He had his earphones in and was just trucking along, while I was stuck with the gym's music videos of Rihanna and Nickelback. I wondered what the song sounded like. It looked like it was really helping his workout.

He finished, and suddenly I realized that next to me was our vascular Fellow, Karina Smythe. Who didn't make eye contact with or bother to greet me. It bothered me to an almost irrational degree. Why don't the doctors treat the nurses like people? This happens all the time. The only person who regularly acknowledges me in public is Pierre Juneau--the orthopedic surgeon who used to be a trapeze artist with Cirque du Soleil. "'Allo 'Aley! You are good, yes?" Then, today, in Ernie's, I ran into two of the plastic surgery residents. Neither of whom made eye contact or acknowledged me. They were out with Jan, a social worker--girlfriend to one--and she said something, but the other two kept looking at their plates. I guess this happens as you get older--you become invisible. But it made me want to cry. I mean, even ordinary people acknowledge the people they work with, right? On the street, or in the grocery store? Is it so important to maintain the ranking? Are they that insecure? Or do they just not even recognize me? Are we that invisible to them. You know, that's probably it. I'm very quiet. I probably am pretty invisible at work. I'm pretty sure I am, actually. I work for that.

Okay. So that's one fardel.

What else.

Oh. Okay. I'm so stressed that I'm having my second period this month. Fantastic! And I've gained two pounds, despite working out like a fiend--or like a semi-fiend, to be truthful. And I have a paper due. And I have no money. Because I just paid Lilly's winter tuition to St. Xavier's and I gave all my cash to the stinky screamy cat lady so she could buy a bus ticket to the rehab center in Iowa to be near her daughter. Compassion opens like a flower, sometimes. But sometimes it hits you like a frying pan as well. Before I knew what I was doing I was thrusting the cash in her hand. She's been just awful. She smells, for one thing, bad--like old beer and cat piss. And she has no teeth. And she's done nothing but sit by the bedside of her daughter and pick on the nurses. But then, I was nice to her, and she brought in pictures of all her cats and of her crack addict daughter before the accident. She even brought in photographs of cats that had died several years before and told me their stories. We had told her that she couldn't ride along with her daughter in the ambulance (because she's so stinky and annoying, basically) but then the ambulance driver showed up and told her she could. Then our trauma nurse clinician stepped in and, without acknowledging her or making eye contact, said, no she couldn't. So the driver retracted it, making up a bunch of baloney. And I know she's a problem, but she's a person, too, and this girl is all she has. This girl and the trailer and the cats and the booze--and I know people make their own choices, blah blah blah, which seems to be the excuse the devil has given all of us for not helping someone out. "Well, it's their own fault!" So, ouch, down came the frying pan and out went the cash.
Hope she got there okay.
But then the rest of the day I was impossibly cranky. I was ecstatic for about 10 minutes. Then I was a BITCH.
You know, one thing I really know about is being poor. Not any more. But I've been there. I guess not really, not totally, because I've always had a safety I could have drawn on--I can't imagine what it would have been like without the safety. Without knowing that there was always some relative who could get me a plane ticket out of whatever hell I'd made for myself. But there are people who work without a net, the people who have it don't have any right to judge them. Because you do whatever you have to to hold onto that wire.



Who would these fardels bear?
That's my 1/2 hour.