Evening Fell, and Life was Good

On Saturday morning I went to get my coffee, and ended up standing in a puddle.

This happens from time to time. We live in an old 1920s foursquare house with all kinds of character. There have been several plumbing catastrophes that are funny to remember in retrospect. This time, it was the bathroom drain that was the culprit. Every once in awhile, the plastic J-trap underneath the original cast iron bathtub falls off of the ancient metal drain pipe and dumps the contents of the tub downstairs to the kitchen. Michael had showered and run out the door to walk to work very early in the morning, so nobody noticed that his shower drained into the kitchen until I got up. The floor was covered in soapy water from one end to the other.

Adrienne laughed at me when she found the great big pile of towels and blankets I used to soak up all the water and threw into the laundry room. I got the stepladder and climbed up beyond the drop ceiling to shove the j-trap back into place, and then I had breakfast and forgot about the pipes.

That evening, after Adrienne’s bath, the kitchen flooded again.

Unlike the first deluge, this was unexpected. Usually the j-trap stays put if I shove it into place. I was already in bed, so Michael attempted to fix the pipe this time. I hadn’t quite dozed off when I heard an irritated “GEEEEEAAAAAAARGH!” The next thing I knew, Michael was standing in the bedroom doorway with a broken piece of old pipe in his hand.

I ended up driving to Walmart to get a mop and towels in the middle of the night.

And then I went back to bed again and slept. Because that’s something I can do: I can sleep, even after a stressful interruption to my night. I’ll always have a bit of a tricky sleep disorder thanks to my autism, but I don’t sit bolt upright from a nightmare at three o’clock in the morning anymore.

The next day was Sunday. Michael had to wait for a call from the landlord’s handyman, so Adrienne and I took turns washing our hair in the kitchen sink and went to church just the two of us. Adrienne doesn’t like to sit with me in the foyer where I feel safe. Adrienne likes to sit on a bench in the actual church.

For years and years I suffered from religious trauma so severe that I couldn’t sit in the congregation, and I will always have religious trauma. The events of my childhood and at Franciscan University are not things I can ever forget. I can’t just forgive the Catholic Church and turn off my sympathetic nervous system. I’ll never forget what a terrible mother she has been. I don’t know what my spiritual life will look like when I’m done healing. But I sat in the congregation, and I sang along with the hymns. I shook hands with the priest and even thanked him for something he’d said in the homily as I left.

Afterwards, we did the weekend shopping– taking an extra-long time so we could walk around the Christmas section and look at the ridiculous inflatables and sculptures made of lights. I wished we could buy the gigantic light-covered peacock in a Santa hat. Adrienne wants a Christmas village to display in the dining room.

When we got home, Michael broke it to me that the landlord’s handyman wouldn’t be there to fix the pipe until Monday morning. And I was frustrated, but I didn’t panic.

Jimmy’s boy biked over to visit just as Adrienne dragged out our own Christmas lights. He played in the yard and chatted with me as Adrienne worked. He’s excited for our trip to Tunnel Number Eight this week before the cold weather comes in ahead of the holiday. He wants to shine a flashlight around and see if it’s haunted.

Charlie, who was a skinny and terrified stray when she came to live with us seven months ago,  is now a warm and affectionate slightly overweight cat. She rubbed against my leg, and then sat watching in astonishment as the porch, her sleeping space, was covered in a rainbow of twinkling lights.

I realized that I hadn’t panicked all day long, even with the dripping mess in the kitchen ceiling and a stressful night before.

This is just to say that if you’ve been in a terrible place, life can get better. If you were traumatized and you’re in a state where you constantly panic, you don’t have to stay that way.

You can go through the darkest place imaginable, and your nerves will be in a catastrophic state. But you can get to a place of relative safety. Life won’t be perfect, but it will be better. Your sympathetic nervous system will take a bit of time to stop launching you into outer space every time something goes wrong, but the day will come when it’s calmer. You can have a difficult and stressful weekend, and not be sick from panic over it. That can happen.

You can lose your whole life, and find it again in a different place. It won’t look the way you thought. But it will be all right.

Evening fell and morning followed, and life was good.