Penny Post #20: Flooding

When it rains, it pours.

Last Sunday was one of those nights where you pull into the driveway and all you can think about is collapsing into your bed. Everyone else is fast asleep and you can feel the weight of being the only person the world has forced to remain awake. Cameron and I had just completed a nine-hour drive home from Tucson, which included dust clouds that painted a white car brown, a two-hour-long detour because of a massive boulder, and (in my opinion) way too many half-funny podcast episodes. You pull into the driveway, bone-weary, and you imagine that as soon as your head hits the pillow, sleep will immediately wrap you in its warm embrace. You slowly traipse up the stairs to your second-floor apartment, lugging your suitcase behind you. You sheepishly dig for your keys in that bottomless tote of yours. You toggle between the several similarly gold and similarly shaped sets hoping to find the one that will bring you close to that never-sounded-so-good bed of yours. You gingerly turn the knob trying to avoid the loud creak that will surely wake up the neighbors. You step inside a dark home and shut the door behind you. You turn both locks so that you can feel safe melting into your plush mattress. You take another breath realizing that you are almost there - just several steps to go. You take a step backward and splash. Huh, am I already dreaming? You think to yourself. You take another step and splash. Okay, if I'm dreaming this is surely a nightmare. You turn the lights on and slowly turn to reveal your living room behind you which is covered in several inches of water. Many expletives later...

Photo by Phil Hearing on Unsplash

Hurricane Hilary had found refuge in my living room. In my living room. She loved my newly installed floors, blew bubbles in my ceiling, and found so much comfort completely soaking my days-old couch. Thankfully, she did not find her way into my bedroom nor my kitchen, but she surely made her mark nonetheless. 

I was as angry and frustrated and baffled as I’d ever been. One little tropical storm (I’m from the northeast) and suddenly my roof caves in. This was not what I wanted to come home to. Sleep evaded me that night as I conjured up a similar-in-size tropical storm of fury for anyone who would listen, especially to all the insurance agencies who would not let me buy coverage the week of the storm. I had moved into this apartment 8 days prior and suddenly I felt I couldn’t get out soon enough.

It took a couple of days of drone-out-all-noise industrial fans to calm my stormy mind. Much of me was too exhausted to muster on. This was the icing on the cake of mini-catastrophes that have made a tumultuous season of moving.

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

Exhibit C:

What more? What more universe? What more could you possibly throw my way in the course of one measly week. How about my landlords having zero building permits in the state of California? Oh, joy.

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Adulting has really hit me hard. I mistakenly thought lessons would find their way to me slowly. One at a time, in a line of succession, with some breathing room. Apparently adulthood is a torrent of challenge after challenge, willing you to grow regardless of your desire to. I didn’t want to be strong. I just wanted to go to bed. Yet, like the water that trickled in through the ceiling fan, adulthood was not going to let me out of its grip.

From Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad:

Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress. Water is not a solid wall, it will not stop you. But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone. Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can't go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does.

Water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Not wood, not metal, not stone. Dripping water wears away a stone. Or a newly-minted couch. Water was my enemy that night; it kept me from better dreams, it kept me from peaceful sleep, it kept me from my plans. I should’ve known, as Atwood does, that water will find what it wants to irregardless of all else.

Maybe we can all learn something from water. The truths of nature illuminate the truths of ourselves.

Water does not resist. Neither does Kiera.

Water flows. So too does Kiera.

Nothing can stand against water. Nothing can stand against Kiera.

Maybe water invaded my home in order to remind me how I’m akin to it. As Atwood says, I’m half water. I’m just as resilient, just as porous, just as inventive.

It also reminds me of the qualities of life (that are becoming more and more clear as an adult): Life happens. Life will continue to happen despite how tired you are nor how much you desire to crawl into bed and shut the world out. Life will sometimes come in with the rain and force you to step into it and soak your feet to get anywhere beyond it. Maybe we can learn to splash in that puddle.

From James Roberts’ Into The Deep Woods:

The word puddle is both a noun and verb. As a noun it was once used also for pools, ponds and ditches. As a verb it’s related to the German pudeln which means “to splash in water”. In early industrial metallurgy it was used to describe the stirring and turning of molten iron in a furnace which removed carbon, creating a malleable material. So puddling is an act of agitation, a process that happens to change the state of something.

The puddle in my living room - the most adult of the mini catastrophes of the past weeks - had churned up all the sand at the bottom of the sea I used to play in. It stirred and turned the molten iron to create a malleable material.

The malleable material is me. The one who flows and does not resist the life that chooses to find it. Life will happen. No amount of wishing for sleep and a warm bed will stop life from happening.

Life will continue to make puddles in my living room. And I will continue to splash in them.

In need of a new couch,

Kiera