floods and me

According to Thomas Foster, floods represent catastrophes on the Biblical scale, perhaps meting out punishment for moral crimes that have yet to be acknowledged. The resulting water, however, purges the crime, and if you manage to survive/stay afloat, you can consider yourself reborn. "If she comes up," he writes, "it's baptism."

These things are coursing through my mind as I sit in my drenched kitchen, surveying the flooded mess that is currently my home. A pipe broke in the bathroom last night, shooting water everywhere for several hours before my daughter woke up and heard something that sounded like turbojets gushing out of a hydraulic plant.

I slept right through it. I was wearing earplugs.

The water soaked through the upstairs flooring and was pouring out all the light fixtures on the ground floor when I awoke. I called the Fire Department, who appeared about fifteen minutes later, said they felt my pain, and then left again, after first offering to help me mop up with towels.

Then the flood-control people arrived, with dire predictions about replacing drywall, floorboards, and ceilings. I said no to almost everything. They are upstairs now with giant vacuums, sucking out the last of the water before they rip up the carpeting and install giant blowers to dry the wood.

But, as I tell myself, at least everything will be very clean after this.

And I will emerge a fresh, new, reborn, and much poorer person afterward, I'm sure.