are water signs about chaos?
or is it that some stories come in waves, waiting for the right time?
If we are friends or acquaintances on social media you may already know that I decided to spend time in San Antonio for the holiday to be with my mom for a few days. It turned into an eventful couple of days. The morning after Christmas day, at 2:15 in the morning, my mother and I woke up with someone banging on the kitchen door over and over.
I should say that, in the years since I’ve lived there, the neighborhood has gotten more sketchy. There are squatters in abandoned houses, others are selling their homes quickly, or losing them to unpaid taxes, and there is a marked criminal issue, with stolen cars or graffiti as regular occurrences. I remember growing up with gangs in the neighborhood. My age and my evolving sense of safety as created through my own attempts has made me sensitive to spaces that are like this. I forget how much it took for me to build a peaceful space. It meant I had to remove myself from some relationships. It meant I had to tell myself it was okay to live quietly, even boring, at times.
I’m digressing. There was a banging on the door. I had heard what I call firework testing over the last few days so I thought it was that. Then I couldn’t sleep the night before partly because of the effects of my booster shot but also because my brother was having a loud conversation or hammering something outside in the backyard. I grew up with a kind of chaos always waiting to unwind itself to show its smile. Yes, just like that Cheshire cat. I managed to fall into a deep sleep because of my tiredness. I thought the banging on the door was fireworks. I swore I heard them before waking. I thought the banging was my brother or a car thumping their music at the stop sign.
But it was cops. They yelled into the house that we had 2 to 3 minutes to get out. My mother asked if the house was on fire and he said “Not yet!”. We made it out and no one was in the house that was on fire. And the neighbors on the other side are also safe. We were all standing outside. Me without shoes, with pajama pants and my cane, standing in the backyard, at the furthest point from the house, watching as the tinderbox of a house, a near replica in dimensions to my mother’s house, burned orange with flames. The branches of the two pecan trees - one in our yard and one in their yard - were both lit bright orange, what leaves remaining in the winter were coming down in small orange sparks against the smoky air.
After about an hour and a half, after firefighters had walked all through my mother’s house and checked the attic and doused the outside with water, but were still fighting the last of some hot spots next door, we were able to get back in safely. There was no way we would be going back to sleep right away. So we decided to sit at the kitchen table, made ourselves some coffee, and I ate cheese to settle my belly. From the kitchen window I could see the fire and police lights echoing across the other houses and the wet streets. Then we were quiet for a moment but then we could laugh for a moment at my brother’s recounting of taking the water hose to the side of the house to keep it wet and almost getting hit in the face by the fire truck’s hose.
I needed the lightness because I had just been standing outside, my body shaking and trying to cry but almost unable. Here I was, someone who always took care of everyone else in the family, and I don’t know that I could help. Inside of me I felt as though I’d let everyone down. Outside, standing there with my brother and mother, I was reminded of another moment in the backyard, years before, where we stood in almost the exact same spots except that my brother and father were arguing and then my brother pulled a gun and shot my father in the leg. It’s a long story I don’t want to recount here but I suddenly felt these two worlds laid on top of each other as though there was no temporal distance at all, as though each were moving together and I was living in both simultaneously.
I didn’t tell my mother this as we sat at the kitchen table. Instead I reminded her of the toddler she babysat for a few hours the day before Christmas, who I joked must have been a water sign (when we are earth, air, and fire) because he kept his bottle near him at all times, even as he wandered through the house, who finally fell asleep on a huge quilt on the floor while watching kid cartoons but with his bottle still in his mouth. And when my mother tried to take it away from his mouth he lit up from his sleep instantly, his flailing arms hitting her glass of tea, which spilled into the quilt and I tried not to laugh as I pointed out the tea and told her to shove the bottle back in his mouth (!!!) and he went back to sleep in seconds, bottle at his lips, his bum on the wet tea spot but unconcerned.
I think to myself that he is a whirlwind of chaos but he is also a reminder that our bodies are mostly water. This tiny boy, milk-drunk and slurring vocalizations in his sleep, whose hands are faster than our eyes. And later, when his mother returned, he found her 6 ounce can of Sprite and flipped it upside down in one slick move. Immediately a 6 ounce can became a 32 ounce big gulp. We were slow motion. And he was in absolute glee.
I don’t know that I have a lesson here for myself. I was reading an article recently that said we have been erroneously taught that a story must have a beginning, middle, and end and that it must have a protagonist and antagonist, and must include a dilemma to be overcome. But the truth is most people remember how the character responds and changes to the hindrances they face.
So maybe I just needed the reminder that stories come up (and come back) unexpectedly. And that I don’t need much more than my body to let things flow. And maybe even destruction can be beautiful if it means it opens up another space that I have kept asleep within me, but that can now sit at the table with me for a bit while I find a way to listen to what it has been trying to say.
between "we have been erroneously taught that a story must have a beginning, middle, and end and that it must have a protagonist and antagonist, and must include a dilemma to be overcome" and "maybe even destruction can be beautiful if it means it opens up another space that I have kept asleep within me, but that can now sit at the table with me for a bit while I find a way to listen to what it has been trying to say", I am feeling this. happy you're safe & feeling all the things. <3