Wet

It rained yesterday. Again. After moving to the midatlantic states, and after many years of cold, frozen, snowy winters, I’m learning what winter looks like everywhere else: wetness. Lots and lots of wetness. I’m sure it is different in Florida, Texas, Arizona, or someplace else for sweet fruit grows on trees, but I haven’t tried those places yet. So, I’ve learned to always carry my umbrella with me.

The rain was insulating, holding in a bone-deep cold. As I walked back home after a full day of class, I navigated the small lakes that were forming on the sidewalk, due to a lacking drainage system. Here we are, the few of us that are out, getting our beautiful European leather shoes soaked, huddling under umbrellas that only protect the upper half of our bodies, walking in pants wet up to the knee, hoping that our destination will appear quickly. The sounds of the city have been muffled. It is like a trumpet with the mute in: the noises are isolated and their ring is cut short. The crazy drivers in this city suddenly became concerned and concentrated, intensely focusing on the road ahead of them. For a few hours, the rhythm of life in this city slows and disappears behind closed doors.

It took me three days and three showers to figure out how the hot water in the house works. The first day, one of our coldest days here, I barely put my body under the frigid stream of water coming from the showerhead. The next day, I was prepared for the battle. I braved the cold: the need for to be clean can drive a person to withstand the most extreme of temperature. Then, the third day. I decided that running the water for awhile might make a difference. It did. Glorious hot water fell from that showerhead.

There are two 3-liter bottles of water sitting on the dining table. They have been there since we arrived. We fill them up from the sink, and they serve as water pitchers at all our meals. Sometimes, in a fit of American anxiousness, I wonder how the plastic of those bottles is holding up. Have I consumed all of the cancerous particles yet? Will those plastic bottles, probably bought from the Rastafarian looking man at the tobacco stand on the corner, still be on the table when I leave Spain?

Something as simple as water suddenly takes on new meaning as I live in a new world and begin to think in new ways. While Spain is far from a third world country, where clean water is often scarce, there is attentiveness to water here. People think twice about letting the water run. They are more careful in not wasting it. I see more signs that alert people to the fact that clean, fresh water is a commodity. Water is again an element with force. Water is not a convenience that one may squander, but force of nature. It pushes people inside on a rainy day. It quenches thirst on a hot day in the middle of the plaza. Seeing water as something that is not simply as bothersome weather or an unending resource reminds me of my place in the world. It is a healthy and refreshing to view see myself as a part of the world: that the world is not our own, but rather, we have a place in it.