Perspective

Last Tuesday.

The building where we live had posted that they'd be turning off the water on Tuesday at 10:00 am to do some repairs. They've been doing that a lot lately. Always at ten in the morning. Often they don't get started then. Often they start much later or don't start at all. And the shut-off, when it happens, is almost always very brief. I figured that, since I didn't have to be to work until three in the afternoon, there wasn't any reason to try to shower before ten. Soon after ten I noticed that the water was off. As it got later, I kept checking to see if the water was back on. I had showered the night before, so I wasn't actually dirty, but I hate getting ready for the day unless I'm really clean and fresh. (I also shave and brush my teeth in the shower.) Past two, running out of time, I called the management office to check the status, and got the typically vague response that it would be back on soon. At the last minute, with still nothing coming out of the tap, I had to find some way to get myself ready.

There was very little water in the container in the refrigerator, but I put what we had in a pan to heat it up a little. Added the small amount that was in a container of bottled water G had saved and the - very flat - remains of the lime-flavored bubbly water that we hadn't thought to throw away. When it was warm I took it into the bathroom, brushed my teeth, wetted my hair a little, and got a cloth, wetted it, and dragged it over myself a bit. When it came to shaving, I didn't want to rinse off the blade in the still relatively clear water, so I thought to use the very murky, paint-y liquid in the water container I use for my painting. I wasn't - comfortably - clean when I'd finished, but I thought myself pretty resourceful for doing what I could. Later that night, after work, as I was heading for the shower, G agreed that I was pretty clever.

Three days later, on Friday, a 8.9 magnitude earthquake hit Japan, followed by a devastating tsunami. Many of the thousands of survivors have not had any access to water for more than two days.