No water and a vomity child – there’s the rub!

The street is full of trucks and noise and men in orange vests all trying to fix the problem. The house is full of dirty bowls and towels and unwashed hands – and no way to clean them.

Inside we sit, my little girl and I. She cries and cries and only wants to cuddle, nothing else – as if I had the power to fix her problems!

I hold her while I look around in mild desperation at the uncleared breakfast, uncooked dinner, ever mounting mound of unwashed clothes…

I try to disentangle and then stop – her face is liverish blotchy and her eyes are wide with belladonna – she needs me and she trusts me and I cannot let her down.

I sigh and settle back into the couch. A mother’s life is thus, so simultaneously mundane and sacred it stretches and explodes your heart like a dream death every second. And just before you’re sure you cannot stand it any longer your love, like life, so bittersweet it nearly kills you, is breathtakingly born anew -

Unbelievably, ridiculously, stronger for its testing.

What to do?

My body is stiff and sore from so much sitting. I walk her to the window, searching for diversion. The cacophony of men and trucks is quietening. Already, the winter day is darkening.

I try the tap and relief gushes out in a thick brown muddy stream.

Blessings rain down into me and I am full.