First Flat
Month: June 2013
Longed-For Morning
Rains, clouds, floods, puddles, mud, grey, damp, smeared, uninspired, uninspiring — after days and seeming days of this, to have a morning that looks like this is better than the cup of coffee in my hand.
Surveying the Damage
We head down to our once-lake-front and take a look at what thousands of gallons of water flowing over a small area in a few minutes can do.
Mud, sand, limbs, leaves, cans — this is what it looks like after a flood.
Plants destroyed, swings caked in muck, belongings strewn through neighbors’ yards. I can only imagine what a real flood would be like.
We go out into the neighborhood, checking on what gifts others received, eventually heading over a couple of streets to a house we’d looked at when we were house hunting. It had been love at first sight. The yard was magnificent; the kitchen/dining area was open yet homey, almost cozy, with a fireplace in the corner. The full basement was finished on one half that opened out to a fenced dog run. Yet a friend advised against it: too much cracking in the foundation walls. “It won’t be a problem now,” he said, “but in a few years, it will cost some significant money to fix.”
We were heartbroken.
As we walk through the neighborhood, I remember that on the other side of the dog run was a small creek — a draining stream just like the one that runs behind our house, and so we head over to see. I couldn’t remember how much elevation there was between the drain and the house.
Not enough.
Talking to neighbors across the street who were out in the yard, we learned that the owners had well over a foot of water in their basement, and that the water had risen to just below the bottom of the window on the outside. I suddenly became very thankful for the two or three inches we found welling up through the slab in our basement.
Tears at the End
"Why are you smiling, Mr. S?" they ask tearfully, as if to say, "How could you possibly be smiling at this moment? How could you treat our pain so cavalierly? Don't you have a heart?"
I'm smiling because it's good to see such obvious signs of close friendship. I'm smiling because the crying gives me a bit more faith in humanity.
Flood
It started around five. I called K to see if she'd need to stay late at work and asked her if it was raining.
"It's coming down pretty hard here," I explained.
And down it came, through dinner, through clean up time, into play time. E and I were by the window when I realized how significant the rainfall really was.
Sheets of rain; gusts of wind. I had these terrible images of one of the enormous trees in the backyard falling onto the house. What would we do? How could I protect my children, my wife?
And still it came down.
Looking into the backyard, I saw we had a lake. And it was growing. Within a few minutes, I realized why: the stream was no longer a stream. And within a few more minutes, we were all standing in the carport in shock.
But it was nothing compared to what I saw when I got to the neighbor's yard. Looking into her neighbor's yard, I saw something that literally made be question my grasp on reality. Water flowing out of the house. Pouring. Torrents running out of the house.
The poor folks were getting it from three directions.
Seeing the owner in the garage, I walked in and asked him if he needed help. I could only imagine what might be going on inside the house, and I thought if I could help him move anything at all to higher ground it would be more useful than standing around with a video camera in my hand.
Fortunately, at that point, nothing had gotten into the house. It was just flowing through his garage, he explained. He'd lived in the neighborhood for close to forty years, he explained, and he'd never seen anything remotely close to this.
I promised to return later to see if the situation had worsened and if he needed help.
It turned out, though, that we had our own issues to deal with.
"Where did the water come from?" K asked. Walls? Floor? Who knows. When this much rain falls in such a short time, the answer is probably, "All of the above."
I vacuumed for at least half an hour before I really felt I was making no progress at all.
"Surely I'm just imagining this," I muttered to myself. "Surely I'm making progress. I've emptied this thing at least ten or twelve times, and it supposedly holds sixteen gallons. That's a lot of water for it to show no change," I continued, still rambling to myself. (The more confused I am, the more likely I am to begin talking aloud to myself. Perhaps I'm not the only one?)
I decided to take a quick break and see if the water rose any. That would confirm my obvious suspicion that water was still flooding into the house.
By this time, though, the rain had almost stopped and the water was lower, almost returning to the confines of the small creek.
What remained was a fetid mess.
An expensive fetid mess: the house, about a half a mile away from our humble home, with a backyard so gloriously landscaped I thought it was a park, no longer had a beautiful garden. In its stead was a lake.
It was no Katrina. Flash flooding at the most. Still, enough of a view of what water can do to put famous floods into a more meaningful perspective.
Green Feet
Every summer it was the same: shoes came off in May and stayed off unless we were riding bikes. The bottoms of our feet went from light green in the early summer, a shade that we could bathe off daily, to dark forest green in August, a color that was almost impossible to scrub out.
We start now.
Late Spring Growth
The garden is growing: snap peas are taking off and the tomatoes are fruiting abundantly thanks, I think, to a new pruning method recommended to me by the manager of a local university's organic garden. The grass seed I sprinkled almost haphazardly in the flat space among the trees at the base of our lot have sprouted finally. (The delay was due, in large measure, to simple neglect: it was an experiment. What happens if you just spread the seed and leave it alone? I guess we have our answer now.)
But that growth outside the house seems insignificant compared to what's developing inside: the Boy is a walker now, able to walk twenty or more steps before collapsing to his hands and knees for something more sure and more familiar.
Today a walker; tomorrow, a runner.
It all happens too quickly.
E’s First Birthday Party
Almost three weeks have passed since the Boy turned one. Three weeks of postponing a party because of illness, because of Memorial Day, because of whatever. So the party is not just a year in the making; it’s a year and three crucial weeks in the making.
We’d planned an outdoor party with games for the kids to correspond with Dzien Dziecka in Poland. A simple plan: potato sack race, water balloon toss, foot race, egg race, and other outdoor favorites starting around three in the afternoon. Afterward, an early dinner and cake.
All outside. I mean, we have a dual-level deck, a carport (that actually used to be a screened patio), and a fairly abundant yard.
It was a week of beautiful weather that we spent in school and at work. But this party shone in the near-future as a reward for all our time inside that we really wanted to be out. And then the updated forecast yesterday: good chance of scattered showers.
By one this afternoon, the chance of showers turned into a certainty of a seemingly-extended downpour. It rained, and rained, and grew drearier and grayer.
“This is just like our wedding,” I grumbled to K. We’d had a week of glorious weather until the morning of our August wedding, when it began drizzling, then raining, then drizzling, then spitting.
“It’ll stop,” K reassured.
“No, it won’t. It will be like this all day,” I replied.
I tend to be a pessimist in such situations. It’s not that I hope to be right; it’s simply that I try to expect the worst so I can be pleasantly surprised if anything brighter emerges.
As it turned out, we were both right, both wrong.
It stopped shortly after all the guests arrived.
We made a quick plan: cake first, then outdoor games if the rain continues to slack.
After cake, we rushed out, finished the games, and as the last shot flew toward the goal,
as the last velcro-covered ball floated to the target, the drizzle returned and wen headed back inside.
Lunch/dinner was a mix of smoked meats, salads, bread — fairly typical Polish fare. The kids picked, the adults ate.
Meal completed and ice cream served, we moved to the living room for presents.
It’s an ironic process for a one-year-old. There’s not much unwrapping he can do. And often the packaging is as entertaining as the toy itself. Yet it’s a birthday: part of the highlight is the unwrapping.
Such was the case today.
The most thoughtful gift: a broom. J, who keeps E during the week, lives just up the street, and she came with her daughter, mother-and-law, and a broom.
“He just loves our broom, and I thought he’d like to have one his own size.”
But there was no time to play with the broom — and no room, for he likes to swing and sway with it in a most dangerous way when the room is so crowded. Never mind — there was plenty to distract him.
New toys. semi-new friends. (How much can a one-year-old remember of another toddler he hasn’t seen in ages?)
The mess afterward was truly enormous. But that’s the sign of a good party, a good mess.
The rain, though? It returned in full force shortly after we went inside and continued into the evening. The older children resorted to that old-fashioned play technique: creativity and imagination.
The rain continued, the children cleaned up the mess, the guests returned home (with Nana and Papa staying longer to help with the clean-up), and K and I set about getting the kids in bed.
Not a bad first birthday party. Perhaps when he looks at these pictures, the Boy will remember something, if only the feeling of excitement.
Time
L is learning to tell time with her new analog watch. “It’s nine-sixty!” she just announced.
Mix and Match
A busy day, with mowing, smoking, staking, moving, shaking -- a busy June beginning in preparation for a long-delayed first-birthday party for the Boy. It coincides with Dzien Dziecka, a holiday missing from the American calendar, so we'll be having a laughter-filled party (We have Mother's and Father's Day? Why do we leave the children out?)
But there was no time for pictures today. And so we have the mix-and-match: pictures from yesterday (L's kindergarten awards day) and a few words about today.