On Being Tested, or, “Fire and Rain”

It’s been an interesting several months. In January, while I was sitting at my desk in the renovated attic of our Victorian house that serves as both my office and my wife and my Master Bedroom I heard a loud, grumbling, rumbling sound followed by a crash. I immediately ran downstairs, out the front door, and into the alley that is directly south of our home. There I saw our fifty-six foot gutter crumpled and bent in the alley, along with the remnants of our DirectTV satellite dish, which the gutter took out. Apparently a large expanse of ice and snow started to melt off of the roof and slid down into the alley taking our gutter and the satellite dish along with it. That was a little more than six months ago.

Ten days ago Chicago “enjoyed” Noah-like Biblical rains. The gutter on the north side of our house was pouring water down onto our side porch in sheets. What was strange is that we’d just had the gutters cleaned not five weeks earlier and here this water was pouring down – water-fall like – onto our side porch, flooding it in the process. As the water worked its way downstairs it began to flood, and, when I say “flood,” I really mean “flood” our outdoor basement stairwell.

The water was rising against the basement door, foot after foot. Rising and rising. Two feet up the door. Three feet now. Imagine the progression.

My wife and I did not speak, we acted. We found buckets and brooms and any other water displacement device you can imagine. For nearly three hours we diverted water. That was our job. Our calling. Our reason for existing: to keep the water from entering our basement. We must have moved in excess of five hundred gallons of water from the back of our house to the front (where there is an incline that leads to the road) that day. How can I be sure of this huge number? I’ll tell you: at one point we brought out a 55-gallon rain barrel to help catch some of the water. It was full in less than ten minutes.

Tonight? Fire.

After having done some "old tenant leaving"/"new tenant about to move in" cleaning on our studio apartment downstairs, we decided we would settle for a bit on our lovely side porch. Have a drink, a bit of relaxation, you understand. We lit the Tiki Lamps. It was a windy night tonight, and at one point, Gloria asked, “Does that look a little strange to you?” referring to a Tiki Lamp behind me. It was smoking. A lot.

I said, “Um, yeah, something’s wrong.”

We went into overdrive scrambling for water, for anything that could put out the quickly growing conflagration. I poured water on it. No luck. I refilled my container and procured a towel. I wet the towel as I was filling my water container. Went to the fire and threw the water on it and then tried to tamp the fire down with the wet towel. Gloria was behind me yelling, “Careful, it might blow up.” She asked, “Where’s the fire extinguisher?”

We both thought it was in the front room, the guest room, so I ran there to look for it. I’ve never really known how to operate the light switch in that room (believe me, if you were here you would understand, it’s not just a toggle switch, it’s some sort of weird imbedded knob I don’t know what-the-hell-it-really-is) so I had no light there, but I was frantically searching for the fire extinguisher in the corner near the dresser when I realized, “I think the fire extinguisher is upstairs, in our bedroom.” At just about that moment, Gloria said, “I think the fire extinguisher is upstairs.” I said, “I’m on my way.”

I run upstairs, I get the fire extinguisher, and just after I’ve lifted it into my arms, I realize, I don’t really know how to use this thing. So as I’m running across the upstairs floor toward the staircase to go back down to where the fire is, I am reading and learning: 1) Pull pin and hold unit upright, 2) Free hose. Aim at base of fire. Stand back 8 feet. (my porch is only 6 feet wide, so I don’t have 8 feet), and, 3) Squeeze lever and sweep side to side.

So I learn all of this as I’m running across the floor and heading downstairs to extinguish the fire and save the day (night, really), only by the time I get downstairs, Gloria has already put the fire out with water. Which is good. Really!

So the fire is out. The house is safe. No one has been hurt. This is good. Gloria says, “You think we are being tested? We’ve had flooding, fire, ants (that’s a story for another day), etc?” I say: Maybe so. She says, “Well, I think we’re passing the test.”

And that’s why I’m writing this blog tonight. We’re passing the test(s). And that is a joyful thing.

Namaste.