Saving water

When we're all in line for water, I just hope my neighbors remember I'm a nice guy.

I let myself indulge in a long (10 minute) hot shower after a sudden onset of a migraine. Under the shower I stand still, reciting upcoming events in the day. I come out of the shower and grab a towel on the door hook. I inhale from the towel a deep breath, as I first drape my face and head to stretch my neck. It smells like my entire family. We tend to avoid laundering the towels too often, to save water. I tell my child not to waste water but it’s hard when running water is a source of enchantment for him.

—

On my way out the door the other morning, my child came out of the bedroom naked from the waist down, shouting at me from the top of the stairs at me at the foot, to wait. As he rushed down the stairs I giggled at the sight of his acorn bounding off his legs. Boing boing boing.

“I need to put real pants on!” he shouted.

Okay but I really need to get going. You can put your pants on yourself.

“I know, but I want you to watch me,” he said. He sits on the couch, where he left his underwear and pants the night before, and I don’t know why this is our bedtime ritual but I don’t attempt to change it. He puts on his underwear and then his pants, and looks at me proudly—not a “look at me ma!” pride but a more salutory “mission accomplished” seriousness.

We don’t wash his clothes after every wear. I don’t imagine most families do. What’s the average cadence for washing clothes that aren’t totally soiled? We are saving some more of that water, I say to myself.

—

Every time I attend a children’s event, I find a lost and found table covered in water bottles. I think about the altars in our homes, the ones we keep replenished with water and oranges for the ancestors who speak to us through their thirst for our devotionals, and elsewhere, churchgoers that keep candles lit in prayer. The arrangement of cups and their varying heights of wax and water tell the dead we are here.

We keep telling ourselves we are saving water. It is the water that is saving us.

James and Dario at Cape May