:: In.a.Mirror.Dimly ::

My father-in-law’s picture of the back yard with the water rising.

I had a couple evacuation plans in mind, but I didn’t think we would use them. I knew where we should drive our car or what order we needed to pack things if we needed to escape the flood.

The water started to rise in the late morning on Sunday. The creek started to overflow its banks near my in-law’s house, our temporary base before our move to Columbus, OH. Most days you can jump across some rocks on this gentle creek. On Sunday the creek filled up its streambed and then filled the hay field behind the house.

We noticed water creeping into the field and thought, “Wow, that’s unusual.”

An hour later we were worried. The creeping creek became a roaring river. It filled the huge field right up to the 3 foot high stone retaining wall around it. It lapped over the sides of the wall and flooded the basement. We had electricity for most of the day, but the water pump was knocked out early in the afternoon.

Soon water poured over state highway 103 at the end of the road.

As we watched the water rise, we learned that other towns in the state were devastated. One home we used to rent in Arlington was severely flooded. Another home that we used to own may have been damaged from what I know of the flood plain nearby.

Towns where we used to go for dinner out had water rushing down their main streets. Brattleboro, Wilmington, and Manchester were all familiar haunts during our time in Vermont, and all sustained flooding and damage to varying degrees.

It’s a strange thing to be in the middle of a potential flood evacuation and to learn that many of your favorite towns are sitting under three feet of water, only to find that the rest of the world is moving along as if nothing is the matter. I could hardly handle Twitter yesterday.

The flash floods around us attacked my simplistic, easy-going approach to most days. I usually try to post something on Twitter about my writing, a humorous rabbit story, and then a few retweets of my friends’ stuff. I usually try to work on my writing and read something constructive. When you’re afraid of waters rushing into your house, the present crisis adopts a kind of urgency that overrides everything else.

For part of the day I could only watch the water rise, trickling over the ridge that separated the house from the river.

Perhaps the thing that made me stop and look for so long was the realization that our lives are such fragile things. We get these reminders from time to time when we see an accident or watch a loved one struggle with a life-threatening illness.

I’m not talking about the fragility of electricity, water, or internet access. I’m talking about a day when you wake up, brush your teeth, and watch a raging river pour toward your house. Big, terrible, things can happen to us any day. And yet so many days, they don’t.

I’m grateful that the only casualty to the flood among us was the hot water heater. Some people lost their homes or businesses. Life is fragile. In an instant, our investments can be washed away. It’s a not-too-subtle reminder to invest in the things that cannot be washed away in a flood.