Pump Failure in Drought, Boy and Pump

1/10/09
Pump Failure in Drought

When we turned on the faucet, here's what came out: nothing.

The pump worked, or it didn't work. First it stopped only in the afternoon; later, other times.

Just get a new pump.
For the first time, and only for a second
before in my mind something closed again, I understood the depth of "Let them eat cake."

I didn't know that I didn't know the pump. I knew water came when I called it. Flushing the toilet,
oh, I forgot. It won't flush just now. That's okay, I'll wash my hands then. Oh.

Even though the full washjug and empty cup I placed
are sitting on the sink by where I reach to the faucet, no, I don't see them, not every time.

Down the road, the deepest creek has been dry so long, its sides and bottom are fully covered with dead yellow pasture-grass,
and it looks like a prairie stretch mark. The water that does run when our pump runs for now
is bought from a truck, not given from the rain into the tanks.
Pumps are machines
and don't know our weather. It is only the pump that fails, right?

More and more it didn't rain, and not for the rain but for the dying pump, more and more we changed. First only
running outside to remind the pump to start and
back to the sink before pump forgot. In and out, in and out. When tired, when lazy, no water until stirred again to go.

Next scheduling the one chance to fill the wash and rinse sinks and the bath all at the same time.
Saving the dishes, playing instead of bathing.

Sometimes taken by surprise when it wouldn't pump at all, but never
completely without until the very last day.

In the end, the new pump prevailed. Water flowed again,
as through our empty creeks it will flow again someday.



1/10/09
Boy and Pump

Oh God, I forgot, when I wrote about the pump I forgot to tell you
how thankful I was that the pump died.
When it first went wrong and it went to the repair shop, they saw nothing wrong.
All the no-water in our world couldn't convince them, because it did, it did work for them.
The soon next time it went, they fixed something. "It's this"
they said, "Good" we said, and the pump worked and we forgot for one day
and on the second day it stopped again
Then they said, "No, it's that, but you can't buy that part."
The pump came home and we nursed it and it ran, when it could, for a long time, and we shaped around it.
The last time, many people had somethings to say, all different, but the last something that was said when it was opened was
"There's nothing you can do. You need a new pump."

Well you know my boy, I know for sure you know him and how well he is doing
I know you know all of this, but he has been in to the shop, and first
they saw nothing wrong, next they told me what was wrong,
and after a little longer, they said, well, there's more to it, but you can't buy that part, and listen,
because we don't even know if we can test that part.
You know what comes next.
We'd learned later one view that the pump has a three-year life span, it was used up, and it was okay to get a new pump.
God, I don't yet know each human life span, and somehow because
I don't know, I believe that you don't know. I know so little that I don't even know what will happen in entirety.

After they said you can't buy that part for little boys,
we took him home,
we nursed him, he ran when he could, and we tried to shape around him.
Time passed, and not yet a long time.
Do you know what he did? Do you remember two years ago when we tried so hard to get him to stand,
and thought the piano was the easiest place, and tried and tried for eighteen months and gave up for certain?
Tonight when we were barely watching, he stood up at the piano four times.
It's not the pump and there's not nothing we can do.
Other pains and other stories will come. We are living now, and he is living now.
You couldn't ask for a better little boy.