Saturday, July 21, 2007
FLOODThere was a flood yesterday in Chiswick where I live. Granted, it only lasted about 45 minutes. But it was exciting nonethess. Streets became impassable, cars got mired in teeming gullies, and I had to take off my shoes, roll up my pants and wade through knee-high water in order to get to my friend M's house where my son was. It was our own little taste of the global warming terroirs that are unleasing themselves all over the planet.
When I arrived at my friend's house, there was a full court press in action. Her basement was flooding - fast. And there were no fewer than 9 adults bailing furiously with buckets, trashbins, and pots - her husband, two friends who had come for lunch, the housecleaner, and four moving men who were supposed to be carting my friends' worldly possessions (many now soaking wet) to storage in anticipation of their big move to America. I headed upstairs and took over minding a pack of 6 children of various ages who were running wild in the newly vacated 3rd floor. I settled them all in front of a video in the last remaining furnished bedroom, made popcorn, cut up cheese and apples, and poured copious glasses of juice. Later, when the rain stopped and the tide seemed to have abated, I took my friend's daughter back to my house so that she could finish cleaning up the mess without worrying about her 4-year old prying open a can of paint-thinner or getting into any of the other compromising items that had been dragged up from the sodden basement.
Taking care of two over-tired and over-excited preschoolers all afternoon and evening was no picnic. They literally ransacked my house. We had a parade. We did puzzles. We painted. We made English muffins pizzas. We had a bath. We watched a lot of television. And through all of this, I was bone-tired, as I have been all week. Turns out the fish in my belly is a bit needier than Gabriel was at this stage of pregnancy - I'm still nauseous daily around 6pm (when I'm trying to cook dinner), still having headaches, still desperate to nap everyday. But even though I didn't have the luxury of rest yesterday, I didn't mind. Because I could viscerally imagine how grateful my friend was to have her daughter out of her hair while knowing that she was safe and well-cared for. I had friends who did this for me when I was moving. My friends A & A generously took my son into their home for about 72 hours straight so Lord Limescale and I could deal with distributing our mountain of belongings variously to storage, post-office and dump. There is NO WAY we would have been able to make the move or meet our ridiculous time-table (we were still frantically packing our stuff 4 hours before our plane left for England) if it hadn't been for our friends' help.
And reflecting on this simple dynamic of give and take, of help needed and help offered, made me think about the natural disasters, that are becoming so much more common in our lives, in a new way. Many people talk about how global warming is the earth's way of sending a message to humans that our relationship is out of whack. Some people would say that the earth is trying to break up with us, or worse, rub us out. Others say she is making a repeated distress call, a "pay more attention" SOS that is becoming progressively more dramatic, since we seem to have the television turned up too loud to notice. But I wonder if rather than scolding or harming us, the earth and the universe she is cradled in might instead be offering us some valuable opportunities for reconnecting to our essential humanness. In the blaze of coming together to transform wet into dry, and care for children whose names you do not know but who nonetheless recognize the mama-light in your eyes and crawl into your laps for comfort, in the heat of a present moment where the only thing to do is to be present to the moment, to step up and use your strength and intelligence and energy and intuition to help others, in the center of that fire - all that is unecessary, distracting, disorienting and isolating about our lives and our culture falls away. And we are left standing side by side with each other, as we are - emotionally naked, muddied, a little sweaty and sticky, with aching muscles - but wide-eyed, breathing together, and fully awake. In other words, fully alive.
Be well.
When I arrived at my friend's house, there was a full court press in action. Her basement was flooding - fast. And there were no fewer than 9 adults bailing furiously with buckets, trashbins, and pots - her husband, two friends who had come for lunch, the housecleaner, and four moving men who were supposed to be carting my friends' worldly possessions (many now soaking wet) to storage in anticipation of their big move to America. I headed upstairs and took over minding a pack of 6 children of various ages who were running wild in the newly vacated 3rd floor. I settled them all in front of a video in the last remaining furnished bedroom, made popcorn, cut up cheese and apples, and poured copious glasses of juice. Later, when the rain stopped and the tide seemed to have abated, I took my friend's daughter back to my house so that she could finish cleaning up the mess without worrying about her 4-year old prying open a can of paint-thinner or getting into any of the other compromising items that had been dragged up from the sodden basement.
Taking care of two over-tired and over-excited preschoolers all afternoon and evening was no picnic. They literally ransacked my house. We had a parade. We did puzzles. We painted. We made English muffins pizzas. We had a bath. We watched a lot of television. And through all of this, I was bone-tired, as I have been all week. Turns out the fish in my belly is a bit needier than Gabriel was at this stage of pregnancy - I'm still nauseous daily around 6pm (when I'm trying to cook dinner), still having headaches, still desperate to nap everyday. But even though I didn't have the luxury of rest yesterday, I didn't mind. Because I could viscerally imagine how grateful my friend was to have her daughter out of her hair while knowing that she was safe and well-cared for. I had friends who did this for me when I was moving. My friends A & A generously took my son into their home for about 72 hours straight so Lord Limescale and I could deal with distributing our mountain of belongings variously to storage, post-office and dump. There is NO WAY we would have been able to make the move or meet our ridiculous time-table (we were still frantically packing our stuff 4 hours before our plane left for England) if it hadn't been for our friends' help.
And reflecting on this simple dynamic of give and take, of help needed and help offered, made me think about the natural disasters, that are becoming so much more common in our lives, in a new way. Many people talk about how global warming is the earth's way of sending a message to humans that our relationship is out of whack. Some people would say that the earth is trying to break up with us, or worse, rub us out. Others say she is making a repeated distress call, a "pay more attention" SOS that is becoming progressively more dramatic, since we seem to have the television turned up too loud to notice. But I wonder if rather than scolding or harming us, the earth and the universe she is cradled in might instead be offering us some valuable opportunities for reconnecting to our essential humanness. In the blaze of coming together to transform wet into dry, and care for children whose names you do not know but who nonetheless recognize the mama-light in your eyes and crawl into your laps for comfort, in the heat of a present moment where the only thing to do is to be present to the moment, to step up and use your strength and intelligence and energy and intuition to help others, in the center of that fire - all that is unecessary, distracting, disorienting and isolating about our lives and our culture falls away. And we are left standing side by side with each other, as we are - emotionally naked, muddied, a little sweaty and sticky, with aching muscles - but wide-eyed, breathing together, and fully awake. In other words, fully alive.
Be well.
Labels: Community Muses, Family Life
