rain dance

I tend to "float" at work. Technically, my office resides down the hallway, just around the corner from Boss-Man's, so that I can hear him when he hollers for me; but on the days when the part-time receptionist has off, or during her lunch hour, I cover the front office and perform as many of her tasks in addition to mine as I can.

The best part of this hassle is that the front office, as one would expect, has a window. A large, frontal one. My office has no windows at all. My office is a cave -- or, rather, a den. The den of a bespectacled, skirt-wearing animal who makes a living flinging papers into the air, condemning recalcitrant machines in a quiet snarled language of her own invention, and occasionally hurling pens at the walls, while sounding as calm and unruffled as the Enterprise's central computer as she does all these things answering the phone.

She likes to get out every once in awhile, and so enjoys seeing what the day is actually like when viewed through a window. She peers out through my eyes, momentarily pacified by the uncaged outdoors, and I glance out the window frequently, for her benefit. It only overlooks a small side street in a small railroad town whose only center is the tracks; but the Midwestern sky is big and the clouds tell a lot of stories.

The other day as I was fidgeting toward the end of the receptionist's lunch hour, wanting to get back to my office where I could focus better on my work, I saw the semi-annual sight that strips away all sense of age and dignity: the village man flushing the fire hydrants. While I have learned, in many ways, to stifle childhood inclinations like pigtails, an eschewance of shoes and the compulsive need to climb the trees lining other people's yards, the sight of white water surging into the street demands the attendance of my worshipful feet.

But Boss-Lady was on another line and wouldn't be able to juggle incoming calls, and D. still hadn't returned from lunch. All work forgotten, I stood with my nose nearly pressed to the glass, quivering with impatience, my thwarted desire causing me physical pain. Cars whooshed gently past, tossing back arching sprays of water; the sun was out; and I was going to die, trapped in a boring adult world from which I couldn't break free.

As I stared longingly into the submerged street channeling water like a canal, I thought of an evening a couple of years ago when I walked Notre Dame campus with a gentleman friend. My joy in that day had nothing to do with him; in fact, he was the only thing that marred the perfection of that walk. As we strolled by the Lakes, far from any shelter, suddenly the floodgates of heaven cracked like an egg and dropped a thundersheet of rain on our heads.

We ran for the trees, which failed to shield us; we fled to the side of one of the monastic dormitories and pressed against the gritty bricks, trying to take advantage of a foot-wide eave five stories up; we failed utterly to keep dry in any way, and in moments were soaked to the skin. While he groused about getting wet, I danced on my feet a little, then flung myself away from our meager hideout and beelined for the puddles. Nothing could be heard above the roar of the deluge but my feet slapping the water and my incomprehensible companion yelling at me from the side of the building. He said something about the puddles being dirty -- "you don't know what's in that water" -- and in that instant I decided his grandmotherly soul had no sympathy with mine, disregarded everything he had to say, and began twirling around with my arms outstretched.

I can't dance. Most of the time I'm far too self-conscious to perform in any physical way in front of others, and adulthood has gripped me enough that on an ordinary day a rain shower will send me scurrying for the nearest doorway to keep my glasses dry. But that day, with nowhere to go and no one else nearby, face lifted to the downpour, cheeks running with sooty mascara, I laughed at the hammer of rain on my teeth and abandoned myself to the joy of spinning, caught in a gravity of my own making, the most graceful woman in the world.

When the sky finally subsided, my fussy companion left his square footage of soaked wall and we walked back to the main part of campus, toward a car and dry clothes; but while he sputtered and squalled like a cat in a rain barrel, I skipped ahead with my sandals in my hand to catch the deeper puddles -- and jumped a little harder than necessary to splash him when he kept chiding me. "I have to," I said, when he told me to stop my puddle jumping and act like an adult. "And I want to. Why don't you?"

He never gave me a satisfactory answer, and didn't seem to comprehend my own. It probably didn't make much sense, but I love the rough squish of mud between my toes, the drenching of puddle spray, the tide of water surging around my ankles, that one moment, looking down, just after your feet pierce the surface and you're standing like the children of Israel on dry ground. Nothing quite compares to the pure happiness of frolicking in shallow water.

So the moment Boss-Lady got off the phone, I sprinted down the hall and arrived at her door out of breath, begging, "They're flushing the hydrants, please can I go outside and jump in the puddles?"

She laughed. "You're so weird. Go for it!"

I didn't wait for another syllable. I kicked off my shoes and charged out the door.

Adulthood kept enough of a grip on my consciousness that I didn't stay long. But I made that thirty seconds count. I caught my skirt around my knees and jumped like there were springs in my feet.

A student driver slowed to a fumbling halt so as not to run me over, the men at the sharpening shop lined up across the street to stare, and as I cavorted in a circle I heard a knocking from one of the windows above me. I looked up to see Josh, my fourteen-year-old tutoring subject, staring down at me from his apartment. I waved, grinned, and jumped a few more times.

What struck me was the look on his face. Amused, endeared, forbearing -- adult -- he shook his head with a little smile quirking one corner of his mouth while I tapdanced in the water, for half a minute the youngest child on the block.