Rain, And More Rain

It's 3:oo am and something woke me up. It's been raining for about 12 hours straight now and I have been sleeping like a baby up to this point. The sound of the rain on my windows always hypnotized me and it was still going. For a few seconds I relished in the rhythm of its music. No thunder, no lightening, just rain and more rain. I noticed my husband wasn't next to me and I heard bustling of some sort downstairs. I immediately felt like something was wrong as if the energy of my husband's franticness found me in our bedroom. I no longer heard the music. I swiftly rose from the bed to get a grip of what was going on.

"We have water" he said as he quickly shuffled nervously down the basement stairs. As quickly as I heard the splash of the water from his boot hitting the water at the bottom, I felt a rush of anxiety. I followed halfway then crouched and watched him through the bars of the wood railing, like a child peeking in curiosity as he examined our sump pump. I could feel the frustration that was erupting from the lack of control he had. The sound of the water moving around his feet was not the same music of the rain water on the window. It was loud, disturbing and screeching to my ears.

I didn't say a word for what felt like eternity, as my eyes looked around at the ruins of what we worked so hard to have. I lived in apartments almost my whole life and just bought the house a year and a half ago. We decorated our basement to remind us of our honeymoon in Hawaii. The soft blue and light brown walls resembling the beaches held the pictures of hula, the dried petals of our leis and the colors of hibiscus flowers. The space held our first Christmas as a married couple, our daughter's first ice cream social with her friends, our first wine tasting and hours of Guitar Hero and Monopoly. Floating and sinking in over a foot of rain and sewer water were the pieces of our life together:

Empty wine bottles from our winemaking hobby.

All the children's books I have been keeping since my daughter was little for our unborn son I was currently expecting.

The telescope we saw the rings of Saturn and the moons of Jupiter through as we fell in love on the balcony of our first apartment together.

The futon, our first piece of furniture we bought together.

Our new kitchen cabinets we so proudly hand stained and installed ourselves over the summer.

All slowly being ruined as water filled the crevices of everything it touched.

Being pregnant, there was little I could do. I watched as my husband attempted to get the water out with the small pump we use for draining our hot tub. The amount coming in was not less than the amount that small pump was getting out. I woke up my daughter to tell her what was going on and to reassure her that everything was going to be ok. It was now 4:00 am and I decided to go outside to see and smell the rain, a common exercise for me when it stormed. Out front the rain had formed a lake that came up to our front steps. Water covered everything else that use to be there; sidewalks, grass, bushes and the street. Many people had already moved their cars, some attempting to do so. Thankfully our car was in the garage, I told myself, which prompted me to check it out. The alleys were completely full with water up to everyone's garage doors. Garbage cans were floating down the street as if a current had been established by a river.

Between our sump pump and the hot tub pump working continuously, the water finally started to lower in our basement. However the rain kept on coming. It was relentless. At this point the radar showed about 6-8 hours of rain still to come.

Now at 5:30 am, my husband finished cutting up and removing the soaked carpet as the water was almost gone. As I looked outside through our front bay window, I watched as the water crept up to our rock barrier surrounding the rose bushes at the front of our house. Inches were left before the water would spill over the rocks and begin to enter our basement windows. I was terrified. All the work to get the water out, and it was possible it could come right back in through the windows. I noticed that the bottom stairs of our front porch were now covered. I heard police sirens and wondered where they are coming from? It started to rain harder and for the first time in my life, I wished it would stop raining.

It's now 9:00 am and the rain was still falling, yet very light. Our basement continued to get water but we were able to catch it as it started. People were driving down our block very fast to try to get through the water. This created ripples and waves of water that just pushed up onto everyone's front yards and houses. I could hear my neighbor across the street yelling at all the cars that did this. Eventually the police put up barriers to keep the cars from driving through.

At 10:30 am the rain would stop then start again. We were literally stuck in our homes. We couldn't leave out the front because water came up 2 steps of our porch and the street was now a lake. The alleys were full of water and into our garage about 6 inches. Somehow the water had not yet tipped over the rock barriers to spill in through our basement windows. Channel 9 news stated we had historic rainfall, twice the normal amount of the entire month of April rain, in just 2 days.

At 11:00 am, our sump pump failed after being overwhelmed all night and morning pumping out water. Within the 15 minutes, 3 inches of water filled the basement again. The hot tub pump was just not cutting it anymore now that our sump was done for. My husband had to somehow manage to get our truck out of the garage and through the water to find a store that had a sump pump. A few hours later he called to report that he had been to 4 stores already and all were sold out of pumps. He had a few more places to try before coming back home yet the flooding all over our area made it hard for him to get around. I told him that the water was now up to 6 inches in the basement and was rising slowly but surely. He suggested I ask the neighbor if he had an extra pump of some sort to help out in the meantime.

Thankfully, he did. He had a pump he used to drain his pool, which was bigger than our hot tub pump. He came by and he set it up and 30 minutes later we still had several inches of water, but it was decreasing. The two of them together still couldn't keep up with what the sump pump did on its own, but at this point was better than just letting the water in and do nothing.

At 4:00 pm the rain had completely stopped. The radar showed it was finally over. I was obsessed with looking through the bay window and starred at it thinking for several hours about what our next steps were going to be. I thought about how ironic it was that our city, finally after many years, started its flood mitigation project earlier that week. I thought about how last summer we didn't get much rain, and were considered in a drought with irregular heat at 103-104 degrees Fahrenheit.

At 5:30 pm my husband came home with what felt like the last sump pump available to buy in our big city. A few hours later, the new pump was installed and only 2 inches of water remained. We couldn't flush the toilets, or take a shower. Finally at 9:00 pm, not only did the lake start to recede in the front, we managed to get all the water out from the basement.

At 11:00 pm we went to bed. My husband said, "If it floods again tonight, who cares, the damage is already done." We were exhausted yet tossed and turned all night. Because we were born, raised and still living in a big city, flooding, tornados and hurricanes were not the norm for us. I didn't really know how to feel. The next day my husband took the day off at work to begin gutting the basement to keep the bacteria from proliferating. No water in the basement this morning. The new sump pump did its job.

Over the next few months we renovated our basement. We were blessed to have received money from insurance to replace much of what we lost physically. I eventually became very grateful for this experience. It not only made us very intimate with the basement of our new home, it taught me to appreciate the memories we hold on to, as money couldn't replace our emotional loss. As to make the renovation affordable, we did most of the work ourselves, helping me get over my perfectionism. At first I thought I would never be able to sleep like a baby again as I listened to the music of the rain after that April, but instead, I learned to respect Mother Nature. I can still become happily hypnotized from its rhythm knowing that lessons are meant to be learned.

Read the rest of this issue of Thought Notebook Journal for more on our study of the firsts in our lives - http://thoughtnotebook.org/issue-1.html