If you don’t know where you’re going, how will you know when you get there? (Casey Stengel)
When is this sink ever going to drain? I ask myself. Sometimes aloud. Sometimes not. With or without an oath. The plunger is my friend, but sometimes it gets lazy and refuses to let the water move no matter how much energy I put into my part of the job. After all, I have not dropped crud or grease down the pipes. Sure, the man who put in my new dishwasher said I should have one of my old pipes replaced, relatively soon. It looks like it came from Rome’s original system. But, if it has lasted this long, and all I have is a few occasional drips easily captured in an aluminum pan, what should it matter? Someone is coming next week to look at the problem.
“Sure, I can handle it,” that man says as he squats under the sink. Then comes the uh oh. The piece breaks off in his hands. I suppose I should have taken a picture of the rotted, clogged, rusted pipe that has been living under our sink since the house was built in 1957—but it wouldn’t have drawn many people back for a second look. If this piece of pipe had been living tissue it would have needed emergency bypass surgery. The medical team would have wondered how the patient had managed to stay alive.
Nothing short of a miracle has kept water flowing through galvanized metal blocked so thoroughly acid would need to fight to pass through. And yet, this old hunk of metal has done the best it could until the end. Sorry I made you work so hard, I tell the severed piece lying on my kitchen floor. Although I’m not really talking to an inanimate object. I’m telling myself to pay more attention to those aspects of the ordinary that give me clues I ignore, generally because I’m busy with so-called more important matters.
Sure I know where I’m going. Sort of. On a spiritual plane anyway. But since I happen to live on this existential planet it might be a good idea to recognize where I am, every step, stone, and pipe along the way.
I laughed out loud with you on this one, Terry! Marcia born 11/9/57
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Can’t tell you how often I wonder where I really am headed. I try to find the sacred in the ordinary, because that is where I usually ‘live’. Bless you for this piece of wisdom.
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