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Friday, April 2, 2010

Good Friday


So- i feel a sermon coming on...

Every year on this day I drive around/do the errands/clean the house and feel a sort of pervading gloom... its not that I feel it emotionally (although, damn, don't get me started) but its a feeling that lingers on the outskirts of the frame...just enough to see the grey in my peripheral visions... I think a lot about Haiti, the people of Tsunami living, New Orleans, unemployment, poverty and all the people currently watching the waters subside nearby us here. We don't live near a river. Or rather, we do, but we are several hundred feet, straight up, nearby. But downstream, there are still ponds and lakes where there should be industry and business and home. gone.

I sat for hours watching the water in my basement rising, one minute at a time, every ten minutes or so. Watching it rise up the stairs was terrifying, in a foundational sort of way. (only two stairs ended submerged - 12 inches) It doesn't matter how many times you tell yourself that there isn't anything you can do. It came UP through the floor. the world of earth was too full of this water, so I am taking it on and moving it around... finding a new place...

The wonder of perspective and hindsight and foreknowledge are that even in the darkness of Good Friday, we cannot pretend we do not know that Easter is coming. wild bright lights shooting through the night and so on and so forth... ribbons and sugar..cakes and daffodils...

So we knew the sun would come. we KNEW. we could not pretend not to...we still know, we still need the sun to come. it arrives like the mailman this morning, so calm in its familiarity with us and our home...

what i learned is this: sump pumps are wonderful small black engine cylinders. wet vacs are in fact, one of god's technological gifts to the world, at the top of the bulkhead basement stairs it is better to blindly step right into the cherry tree when carrying the 40gal bucket because the cherry tree branches are actually soft. they are soft. smooth, like a piece of linen on your face. a joy. The coldness of the stone floor is what gets you, even if you have to wreck your 15 year old hiking boots, you cannot work barefoot or you'll get the chills. big. I learned that I cannot take photos of my christmas ornaments floating. I don't see the joy in losing the advent calendar. Rubbermaid bins ARE safe things to leave in a basement filling with water, until the stack tips because the water is making the first one in the pile float. This will be an opportunity to purge some things I have held on to for strange reasons and . I will clean house. Today will be another day of wetvaccing as we still have one place with several inches and I had to take a break to tend a vomiter. slow. We are all falling apart this good friday. but we are not pretending the light isn't shining.

5 comments:

Amanda said...

We have a good mant friends in RI who are suffering greatly. Mass got last year's ice storm, you guys got the great flood. :-(

Mama Mama Quite Contrary said...

Sorry about the clean-up. I know what a mess it leaves and how much damage it can do. My parents (who live at the base of a mountain) would get six feet of water in their basement every spring. (Yes, I said feet.) As a kid, it really ticked me off that they wouldn't let us swim down there.

Viv said...

I have always had basement envy. I'm over all that now.

Sorry Kate. :(

Jen said...

Glad you are okay but so sorry about the mess. I think I would have thrown my hands up and walked away in tears. Good for you for tackling it head on.

urban craft said...

oh, k! I grew up in a house with a basement that would flood when we have heavy thunderstorms. Our basement flooded 5 times the whole time I lived there. I must have been about 6 the first time and will never forget that horrible sinking feeling that you get when you realize you can not fight the elements and feel like you will be taken over by them. After the 2nd time our family had gotten the system down of how we worked the flood. Bucketing the water as much as we could in large bins, trying to plug up the sewers in the alley, etc. I will never forget the stink of wet carpet that seemed like it took months to dry out.
I feel for you and your life and basement will be back to normal soon.