Just Enjoy the Damn Water

Just Enjoy The Damn Water
August 14, 2024

Falling down the metal spiral staircase seemed unnecessary.
Until two minutes later when I realized, almost crying, that it probably was just what I needed.

Water is a big thing around here. A precious resource, one which I hope never to take for granted again. Clean water to drink and also water to bathe. The water to drink is delivered in big plastic jugs, and it usually works out that the water man drives past my house just as I am about to run out. How clean is it? How “purified” is it? I am not sure. I drink it, I don’t get sick. It doesn’t mean I don’t have cooties crawling around my gut. Twice a year I do a little cleanse and all seems to be fine.

The big water, the one for the sinks, the shower, and in the winter, the plants, works like this: I have an underground cistern/holding tank in my yard. As a side note, the cistern was built too small, at a time when I didn’t know that I could stand up to the “experts.” Because we pay the same price for the delivery of water up to 10,000 liters whether we need a glass of water or more, this still annoys me a little bit. I had learned how to do the math and I was almost certain that the way they wanted to build it, it would hold no more than 7,500 liters. I said just that, I was told that they knew what they were doing, I still had much to learn and so I didn’t mention it again. It holds 7,500 liters. Lesson, growth.

On the top of the house, there is another tank, a “tenaco",” and this is the tank which through gravity, blesses the shower, sinks, and garden hose with water. The tenaco holds 1,100 liters. When the tenaco runs out of water, the pipes gurgle, I walk to the cistern, turn on the little switch, set my phone timer to 30 minutes, and a wonderful pump shoots water up the side of the house and fills up the tenaco. Hopefully, this happens when the sun is shining so that we may use the solar panels. It’s a fun process and it delights me every time.

So, back to the the cistern. When the cistern gets low, I call Reyes and he comes in his huge truck and fills it up. Because I am still itching about the miscalculations (really I am still itching about a time when I did not know that I could speak up), I try and make sure to not call him until both the cistern AND the tenaco are empty. Then because he’s such a nice guy and he knows what’s going on in my little head, Reyes will often take a few extra minutes and give my garden a good long soak.

Over the years, I have learned to be intentional with my use of water, while still enjoying it. In the winter, I will often save the shower water and feed it to the thirsty plants. I have a special system to wash the dishes. None of it feels stressful, rather it feels…real. And somehow it feeds me. A little bit the way keeping the woodstove burning many years ago used to feed me.

In the summer months, a new player enters the game: the rain. For about 5 months of the year and if all goes well, massive amounts of rain fall from the sky almost every night. This is like pesos raining down and I am always excited to catch them. Unfortunately, again because I have let the experts - always men and often arrogant - tell me that they know best, I cannot catch the water that falls onto my roof. It has tar in it and that’s all I am going to say about this other than I won’t make this mistake again. However, when the rain is strong, I AM able to catch water from the big sail that covers my patio, and let me tell you: I am on it.

A small horse trough (I call it my swimming pool) in just the right place, connected to a silicone tube which I have learned to use to siphon the water straight into the cistern. At night I lay in bed listening to the rain falling and in the morning, before the sun is even up, I am out there checking on the night’s harvest. SO FUN.

In the past few weeks, just as I did last summer, I played a game with myself to see how long I could go without calling Reyes for a topping-off. It hasn’t rained a whole lot yet this summer so I have been extra intentional and saving every drop I could. I have had one eye on the cistern and one eye on the night sky. Water is gently often on my mind.

Then we had several days of no rain and I could see the cistern getting lower and lower. Could I go one more day? Would it rain tonight? I had to make sure to not run out on Saturday because there is no water delivery on Sunday. It’s one thing to be aware and it’s another to be without water. I hope to never be without water.

Two days ago, I broke and I called the water truck. It came and it filled both the tenaco and the cistern. To the very top.

That night it rained for hours. And then the next night again.

My horse trough got filled to the rim - and I had nowhere to put the water.

Enters a weird mindset, one I had never experienced before and one which you’ll see will bring us back to me falling down the metal spiral staircase.

Maybe I will call it “Abundance Anxiety?”

About 15 years ago, I was in a coaching session with a very distressed client. I could see that she was distressed, I could hear it and also, I could feel it. She explained to me that she had a lot of money (she said how much and the amount of zeros went over my head) and that she was painfully stressed about managing it and desperately afraid of losing it. At the time, I was exactly on the other side of the money continuum and had to make an instant decision to stay focused on her pain and on how valid it was, whether I could relate to it or not. The very real truth for her was that she had many millions of dollars in the bank and that she stayed up at night afraid to lose them.

Uff.

She was so ready to feel better, so ready to sleep at night, so willing to work with me that within one hour, we took her angst away. Seriously. We went straight to her worst-case scenario, the one that secretly, embarrassingly terrorized her, and from the safety of my office, with her eyes closed, she spent some mental time there. She pushed a shopping cart up First Avenue, she ate from garbage cans, she took her cat with her and she felt all of it. By the time she opened her eyes, it looked as though some light had made its way behind her eyes and she said quietly: you know, it wouldn’t be that bad. And that was that. She later sent me a beautiful thank you note and I never saw her again.

Back to the rain and the horse trough.

After weeks of managing the water supply, being super aware of it, and making sure I didn’t run out, I realized this morning that I had actually been feeling anxious about the new abundance. A full tenaco, a full cistern, a full horse trough, and more water than I can use. Because of the mosquitos, I cannot keep water in the trough for more than two days. Because right now there is only one of me living here, I cannot use water this fast. Because the plants drank all night, they do not need me to water them.

But I had to do … something.

I started saving some of the rainwater in the empty drinking water jugs and plann to use them to do the dishes. This barely made a dent. And then, if I use this water, I am not using the tenaco water, and what if it rains again tonight? I am going to have to waste the water from the trough!

All of a sudden, something that had been fun and light became heavy and pressuring. Because I had so much of this blessed water.

I could start to see what was going on, and it didn’t feel good to see it. Some tightness, some weird fear, some yuk. But I was still in its claws, even as I was seeing it. It takes a while.

So I thought maybe I could get some relief by adding water to the tenaco from the underground tank. Surely I had used some of it in the last few days and if I pumped even just 500 liters of water into its belly, this would make some room in the cistern and I could - please let me - siphon the trough water into the cistern and then maybe, maybe whatever had me would let me go.

Are you feeling anxious just reading this?

That’s what I would do. All I needed was to get on the roof and using a stick check by sound where the full line of water was. Where it sounded hollow.

As the sun was coming up over the jungly hills, I climbed up the metal spiral staircase with my stick, breathed in the magnificent early morning view, knocked on the tenaco, and found out that somehow it was still completely full then made my way back down towards my yard, perplex.

And this is when I slipped. The stairs still wet from the rain (this was not lost on me), my flip-flops did a little dance and I fell down the stairs. I banged myself a bit, I broke nothing, I almost cried and then I got it: just enjoy the damn water, Laura.

I understood it all. How overnight I had transferred my cautiousness of not having enough water to an anxiety over having too much of it. How water had nothing to do with any of it but instead I had somehow, without noticing, subscribed to an attitude of over-vigilance that was just looking for a home in which to build a nest. Not enough water, too much water. Just a road toward a habit I had not even noticed.

The antidote: enjoy.

Enjoy the water truck, enjoy the rain, enjoy the millions, enjoy the shopping cart. Be mindful of the peace-stealing traps, especially when they look good.

Just enjoy. Because being human is big stuff.

Now I am going to pour all this beautiful rain into the yard and trust that the plants will know just what to do with it. I am certain the hibiscus won’t complain to the bougainvillea about “too much.”

And then I am going to go buy some arnica and … enjoy.

Read and share on Substack
https://lauralavigne.substack.com/p/just-enjoy-the-damn-water