Call a Plumber

I was cooking when I heard a loud stutter--like a machine choked on some major electric snag. Ch-chock-ch-ch... It was loud and dull and decidedly worrying.

I hollered to my son, "Aaron, did you make that noise?"

I imagine his head perpetually parked in front of the computer, laughing at some sillies on Youtube, as he is often caught doing.

"Not me," he hollered back, "it's coming from somewhere outside."

Somewhere outside? My mom-trained ears told me it's not quite.

Anyhow, I continued cooking, after all, there are hungry mouths waiting.

Once my task was done, I knew I needed to investigate this mysterious sound. In the meantime, my son who is nearer to the source, continued with his computer staring. Sometimes, I wonder, how do you tune out when the loud noise is choking away? A teenager can.

I followed the noise and it was coming from the stairways. As I walked up, I could feel the vibrations. The flight of stairs was convulsing with a steady rhythm. My hands bounced like Richter needles when I placed them on the stairs.

Why are my stairs shaking uncontrollably? Call 911? Rapture? The whole thing is going to explode? My mind went through a whole gamut of possibilities.

What did I do? I called my husband, of course. He had no clue!

In the meantime, there are a knock and my neighbor was standing outside.

"Do you know water is gushing out of your yard?"

Who could have thought of this correlation: Tremors on your stairs = a gash in your water pipes?

So, there, we pinpointed the problem. Our neighbor was not only saintly, he knew a thing or two about burst pipes. He shut off the water pump.

The house quiet down, like a rowdy school boy bought under control. Just like that--it's almost magical, except the magic was lost on me when I was told that there would be no water in the house.

How's one to survive without water? Call the plumber, quick. Except, it's now 8 o'clock in the night and some people could be calling it a night.

We called the plumber anyway, there are emergency plumbers, we know. One said, sorry, got to keep his family happy--he's done for the day. We called a number of them and finally one said, "yes."

We couldn't be more thankful. A plumber is on his way to save our lifestyle, to give us the gift of water, without which we would never to be able to survive the night. I can't imagine a toilet full of bodily waste, a sink full of dishes, hands full of germs, mouths not touched by night-time toothbrushes. Well, it's unthinkable.

Which got me thinking--how we have allowed life's little interruptions to throw us off. So pampered with life's conveniences, so spoiled with modern technology. We expect. We need. We want, We're entitled.

The water leak was not fixed--the plumber couldn't fix our problem. Impeded by darkness, lack of pumping parts and the unearthly hour of the night, he called it off.

There were moans that night but we survived on water bottles, used sparingly, like it's gold and we learned something--we can make do, if life demands it.