SEPT 2024 - Water, Windows, and Books

My house is an equilateral triangle. No rooms have four walls or right angles. My study has five walls, four of which have 10 floor-to-ceiling bookcases, all filled with books: world tales, fiction, non-fiction, essays, poetry, spiritual explorations, and healing. I also have material from former students, copies of books, novels, and papers I’ve written, as well as journals and lots of children’s’ literature. 
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Above my desk is a fixed window that fills most of the upper wall, allowing me to look out at the mountains and the sky. When the contractor I hired shortly after buying the house was building the bookcases, he refused to build any beneath the window on a side wall that covers half the wall; beneath it is a couch. The wall-to-wall carpeting is a soft surface on which to stretch and exercise. The room is a pleasant place to write and read.

One evening, I was on the phone, talking with a friend, when suddenly water started pouring in through the fixed window above my desk and the window above the couch. I ended the call and ran outside. It wasn’t raining. I called P. the man who’s done all my house renovations and told him what was happening. “I’m on my way,” he said. I rushed out to the utility room to turn off the main water faucet but the threading was stripped. I couldn’t turn it off.

P. arrived, found a way to turn off the faucet, then raced upstairs and discovered a valve in the bathroom toilet had burst. While he was doing what he could to shut it off and stop the water flow, I was covering my computer and desk with plastic sheeting. Too many water emergencies in the past resulted in my having a large roll of plastic sheeting on hand. 

The devastation was immediate and complete. Water flowed through windows and the ceiling onto the plastic sheeting covering my desk and computer, flooding the floor, drenching the couch, and pooling on the tops of the bookcases. P. helped me hang plastic sheeting over the bookcases and showed me how to poke holes in the bulging areas of the ceiling to release water into pots. By the time we placed all the pots to contain the water, mopped up tops of the bookcases, and the wet floor upstairs to stop further flooding, it was almost 11pm. 

Just before he left, P. said, “My men will be here at 8am tomorrow morning. We’re going to have to gut the room—remove all the books, strip the carpeting, take out the walls and the ceiling.” I nodded, too exhausted and shocked to take in the totality of the wreckage, and what it would take to remediate the damage.

The next morning, as promised, the crew arrived. The first thing they did was to carefully put all my books in cartons, labeling them according to my description. By the time all the cartons were stored in the garage, other members of the crew were busy moving the bookcases into the guest room, wiping down any remaining wet surfaces. At the end of the day my study was an empty shell of space—walls, ceiling, floor and rug removed. All that remained were the studded walls, subfloor and a dehumidifier. Before they left, the crew helped me set up a makeshift office in the guest room.

It took months before the walls, ceiling, floor, rug and bookcases were installed. My books had been sitting in the garage all this time, unprotected from humidity and mice. Although the cartons had been labeled as to which bookcase and shelf the books belonged, I worried that I hadn’t labeled the cartons correctly, that the books would have been damaged by their time in the garage, that they wouldn’t be shelved in the right order . . .  

I had just come home when the crew finished putting the last of the books back on the shelves. I walked into my study and gasped, seeing a mix-up of books. Their looks of pride changed to disappointment. The crew was so upset I quickly realized what an incredible job they’d done, that the new arrangement was different, but good enough. When they offered to re-arrange whatever needed to be changed, I assured them everything was fine, more than fine. I apologized for my initial reaction, congratulated them on the amazing job they’d done, profusely thanking them for their hard work restoring my study and managing to put the books on the shelves in good order. They looked relieved. I felt terrible. They’d done such an unbelievable job, better than I could have imagined, and all I could see were books on a top shelf they’d put on a bottom shelf. I did what I could to remedy my thoughtless initial reaction, thanking them over and over, telling them how pleased and grateful I was for their astounding work.

After they left, I sat in my newly restored study, surrounded by my books, most of which had survived the flood and their time in the garage, overwhelmed with gratitude. 

Have you survived a disaster? How did you respond?
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SEPT 2024 Monthly Stories