We moved in the last two months to a new house. Since the move we have survived several pretty outrageous storms. Last night it RAINED! Three inches were recorded in our area. This morning lakes appeared where there were only fields yesterday. As the rain fell during the night, I thought smugly about how if I had been in my old house I would have had to deal with water in the basement. In our new house we have a sump pump.
What I was unaware of was that sometime during the night the sump pump stopped. When we got up this morning and surveyed the aftermath of the storm, we had a very shallow lake in our basement. Boxes yet unpacked sat soaking up the rainwater like thirsty sponges. I spent the day cleaning up, throwing out and repackaging.
When my first son was born I remember him sleeping in bed with us. As he slept I put my hand on his chest and could feel his heart working hard to deliver vital blood to the rest of his body. I realized that I could take some responsibility in his safety, but there were other forces at work that I had no control over. Just like my sump pump.
I'm tempted to think that I have a lot of control over my life, that I'm resilient and responsible. What is hard to realize is that I'm much more fragile than I want to accept, and that the homeostasis of my life runs on systems that I count on but stay strangely unaware of.
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