discoveries
On a recent Saturday morning, I was blue-collar grinding (volunteering at a local hospital), when one of the doctors I've wo-manually labored for stopped by briefly to check on a patient. She had her young daughter, Ivy, in tow. I’d met little Ivy before. The doctor asked me, “Would you mind keeping an eye on Ivy for a minute?” “Sure!” I committed, bending down to get eye-to-eye with the girl and engage.
Ivy’s an adorable little human. She’s a sober 4-year-old, about three and a half feet tall, with wavy chestnut brown hair down to her waist. She was wearing a yellow, “Beauty and the Beast” dress. Ivys into all things Disney (who the shiar isn’t?). Disney seems to home right in on impressionable young minds like hers and mine.
Ivy asked me, “If you could have a wish, what animal would you be?”
I believe we should talk to children as if they were adults - my parents were like that with me - which partially consists of complicating basic ideas and observing where the kids go with it.
“Where would I BE, as this animal?” I asked, after all, it was an important consideration.
“What do you mean?” she asked, puzzled but genuinely interested.
“Well, I wouldn’t want to suddenly become an elephant here in the hospital - would I - or a bear in the middle of the ocean?”
“NNoooo,” she said, so scandalized that she took my hand to reassure me.
“I’d probably want to be an alpha predator too,” I was thinking out loud now, “you know - no use becoming an animal only to get eaten.” She nodded, scouring me with her wide, unblinking, brown eyes, “since humans are the #1 alpha predator, I suppose I’d like to be me.”
“NNooo,” she said, sternly. Her body language radiated impatience. She’d decided that I hadn’t understood the question - or I didn’t appreciate the magic possibilities of transformation.
Her mom returned, just then, and after touching base with the duty nurse, she turned to Ivy and me, “Ready to go?” she asked. Ivy immediately changed allegiance by releasing my hand and taking hers.
Doctor-mom thanked me and as they walked away, Ivy gave me a bashful, half-hearted, goodbye wave.
I’ve discovered that if I do my volunteer work early on weekend mornings, from 6 to 10am, it's almost like it never happened at all. Afterwards, I’m not tired and I have the rest of my day free. I had to give up something, of course - my early weekend antisocial coffee consumption and writing time.
Coffee shops are my favorite places to write but few of them are open at sunrise. I’d found one that I liked close to my dorm. The most direct route is to walk through an old cemetery. At sunrise it can be dark, foggy and dew soaked - a scene right out of “Night of the living Dead” - creepy-ish, but I’d take the shortcut every time.
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<em>Slang…
shiar = the mother of all curse words</em>
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