Water for Wednesday

Is it Wednesday? Did we survive? Is everyone still breathing? Do we get to talk about something else now? Or is it time to talk about 2020? Lord help us all.

I mean, the Lord is helping us. Look what we took out of our beautiful old wall yesterday.

That’s right, that’s a pipe, and that bit there is a big hole. An ancient pipe with a very old but necessary bit missing. By the grace of God the whole wall wasn’t destroyed, neither by the original damage, nor by us foolishly turning the water back on. The wood inside the wall is dry and intact, the wall isn’t crumbling, it was only a matter of putting a new modern pipe in the place of the old hand-wrought one.

In fact, get this, we are now able to use our third bathroom. And today the wondrous person who achieved this feat is coming back to restore the wall. This person, I am so amazed to even be saying this, knows how to plaster, and knows about vintage wall paper. I could almost weep, honestly. But I won’t, because I am made of sterner stuff.

I mean, if you’re having trouble feeling feelings of gratitude and thanksgiving, imagine having children who suddenly, and almost without warning, wake up one morning and decide to behave in ways that sort of functional adults might behave. Like, they want to bathe more than once a week, and brush their teeth. This may not seem like a big deal to you, but when you’ve been telling other human people to bathe and brush their teeth every few minutes for more than a decade, and then find yourself standing outside the bathroom door in your bare feet, cold, angry, shivering because those very people have suddenly conceived a way of life that includes almost nothing but bathing and brushing their teeth—and there are like four of them who think they have to live this way now—you might be able to imagine the incredible glory of walking into your own private attic lair, considering your own claw footed tub, running water in your own sink where you may brush your teeth unharassed by the bathing mobs below.

I must just pause in wonder and give thanks that all eight of us don’t have to bathe in a metal bin before a meager and smokey fire, in order of filthiness, the cleanest one going first and the dirtiest one going last. Nor do I have to go out and chip a block of ice off the latest snow bank and bring it in and warm it up enough to wash my three dishes and my fork. Nor do I have to haul the water in bucket by bucket from the well and carry it, sloshing, to fill the cool, quiet water jars in the corners of every room.

Honestly, the very wonder of modern plumbing is something that ought to inform and shape my daily consciousness much more than it ever does. The water comes into my house—my stately, old, elegant house where the rooms catch the glow of autumn light as perfectly as anyone could hope for—and it arrives either hot or cold, depending on the whimsy of the moment. It runs quietly through the veins of this house, like streams of living hope.

Imagine trying to survive the strict life of purity and holiness detailed in Leviticus..in the desert…without plumbing of any kind. I mean, I try not to think of anything like that. I like just to float around in my own minuscule mind, irritated by politics and crazy things online, not surprised by the luxurious water flowing over my hands by the flick of a tap.

Well, there you are, one thing, at least, to be grateful for. Now back to angry politics.