Gnome, Sweet Gnome

My sister went back to New Orleans last weekend. Since Katrina, she had only been back a couple of times, just to run in and out on the same day. She hadn't seen her friends since Katrina, hadn't spent more then a moment in the city. So she scheduled dinners and luncheons to see as many people as she could and spent a long weekend in the broken city she so dearly loves.

She found things barely improved since the first time she went back to the city. She briefly walked through her destroyed home in Lakeview and found someone was more patient and persistent then she was and had searched and stole her jewelry. It wasn't like she could be angry, my God, she didn't really want to search through the mud, muck and filth. It was her third trip to her devastated home and her total recovery remained one chair, 7 plates, one vase, a glass ornament and 4 stepping stones from her front yard.

She returned to Houston early Superbowl Sunday to the house she and I moved to only last weekend. I was busy unpacking and putting things away when she drove up. After we unloaded her car, we sat in our living room as she told me the tales of her return. I wondered when she left if she would return happy with her decision to stay another year in Houston, or if the visit would strengthen her loneliness and longing for the Crescent City. She never said, but as she told of the difficulties of living through the destruction, she seemed more at peace and at ease with her decision to stay longer in Houston.

As she gave updates on all of her friends, she jumped up and returned with a large box and began her story. When she arrived at a friend's home it was presented to her wrapped with a bow. She showed me the printed note which on the cover read:

"Through breach and flood
Water and mud
Of all the things that
didn't last
This one is a blast from
your past"

Inside the note read:

"I hope this gives you great thoughts of your time in New Orleans…"

As she started to open the present, her friend told her, "I hope this doesn't make your cry." My sister held her breath and opened the box. A ceramic garden gnome, leaning on a shovel stared back at her.

Puzzled, my sister said, "Well thanks, it's lovely, but can I ask why you thought it would make me cry."

"It's from your front yard," her friend replied.

"Wait a minute!" I stopped my sister's story, "You had a gnome in your front yard?!"

"No," my sister replied. "That's the whole point."

The friend went to my sister's wrecked home and searched through the rubble in the front yard. Finding the gnome, she took it home, soaked it in Clorox for two weeks, brushed it down with a toothbrush to clean all the muck off so my sister could have something more of her home. Problem was it was a piece of someone else's home. The gnome belongs to a neighbor next door, or from blocks away. Who can say as the area was covered in some 8 feet of water for nearly a month?

The care and thoughtfulness of the gift were priceless. The reality was hysterical. Later they laughed in a local bar over the mysterious gnome. They shared the story with another patron who confessed to being a police officer. He pointed out that basically, my sister's gift was stolen property.

Since the gnome is now home here in Houston, I guess that makes my sister a felon for crossing the state line with stolen property. Does that mean I'm now harboring a fugitive?