The Flood

We drive in the rain. Two of the three roads out of our Kemang neighborhood are blocked with water. Our only choice is to sit on Kemang Raya in the long line behind cars and trucks. Only the motocycles seem to be making progress down the road by squeezing through seemingly impossible tight spaces. Their tires send a spray of muddy water. I am grateful for a dry car. Even if we're moving by inches.

After thirty minutes to travel 20 yards (yes, I know it would be faster to walk - probably faster to crawl), we turn off Kemang Raya and see reason for the backup. The street ahead is flooded, but still passable. The water comes to midwheel. As I watch motorcycles stall out with water in their exhaust pipes, I am again grateful for my car.

We cross the bridge, I have a clear view of the river. The caramel brown water surges past the manmade barriers, invading local houses, turning empty lots into swamps, and threatening to submerge the bridge on which we're driving. Due to our snail-slow pace, I get a lengthy view of a house near the river. It is a cement house. Clothes still hang on a line - pink shorts, a tattered once-white shirt, and jeans turned inside out - getting drenched in the rain. I'm sure the owners have much more to worry about than wet laundry. Soon I can see the front of the house. A man crouches in the doorway. Behind him, water spills over the back entrance (on the river side), like a waterfall. He holds a plastic orange pail. He scoops the muddy river water out of his house and dumps it on the other side of his front stoop. Again and again.

The rate of his scooping is no match for the waterfall pouring in his back door. And I wonder at the sight. Why doesn't he give up? Does he see how futile his efforts are? However, instead of desperation (a look which I'm sure I would have if faced with the same circumstances) his expression is one of determination.

I watch him until we turn off the street. I feel a strange mix of pity and admiration for him. I think of him often through out the rest of my week.

***

Five years ago, I faced a waterfall coming through my basement window (when my dear friends Thomas Johns and the Peterson boys came to our rescue). Oh that was horrific. But since then, my "waterfalls" have been different. They aren't literal. Instead, they come in the form of decision making, mothering, guilt, feeling inadequate, laziness, feeling overwhelmed -- any seemingly insurmountable obstacle. Life is full of them.

I hope I can face my obstacles more like this Indonesian man in the Jakarta flood. I hope I can look ahead, not behind me at the water pouring in. I hope I can stay determined, and keep trying even if its with small, continual efforts. Pail by pail. Scoop by scoop.