A Right of Passage…Floods of 2012

We live in a pre-war apartment. I’ve come to know that to mean nice wood floors, spacious rooms, large foyers, high ceilings, thick sculpted mouldings, and last, and no longer least…old pipes. The pipes in our building are of the 1928 variety. They are old pipes…and until last week, they had stood up.

Taking it all in at the Sharmas means going with the flow as different events unfold around us, as they do. It should have come as no surprise that the day after Vikas installed the chandelier (as Scott calls it), also fondly known as the light above the dining room table, the floods of 2012 were upon us.

I was in the middle of something at work, when I heard water pouring. No big deal, the water had been off all morning and it sounded like the tub tap was running. I took a couple of minutes, finished up what I was doing and then went to turn the tap off. There was water pouring out of the ceiling light (chandelier) in Kevin’s room….buckets and buckets of water.

In hindsight, I did think that if I was a serious blogger, I would have grabbed my camera and snapped a quick photo, but I’m not there yet. Instead, I threw a bin under the water (be thankful Vikas that we have one or two empty bins around in case of an emergency), and ran downstairs to tell the doorman that we had a serious water situation going on in our apartment. I ran back upstairs (i.e., hop in the elevator, wait for the doorman to push the button and ride to the sixth floor), walk into the apartment and for whatever reason, head to my bedroom, where, wow, there was hot water pouring from the closet and soaking every piece of clothing we own. I threw a blanket over our duvet and started pulling all the clothes out of our closet. The water poured out of the ceiling much longer than it took to yank all the clothes out of the closet. As I was furiously trashing my room, don’t think it didn’t occur to me that I could count the number of weeks since the last box had been unpacked and things were put away.

Stuff, life stuff, just seems to happen to us. For the most part, we look to find the humor in a situation. Given a little time to reframe, these occasions become famous family stories that help define our journey. People will smile and perhaps even laugh to think of the sod story, the moving-day chicken pox story, the barfing plane ride from Caracas to Ottawa story, and others. I promise you, the Sharmas go to New York sequel won’t be dull.

If I’m honest, I could see the humor in the flood right after it happened more than I do now. Being mid repair with workers in and out all day as they bring in yet another machine to dry out the walls, is a bit of an exercise in patience on my part. When I feel a little meltdown coming on, I remind myself that I hate mould and mildew more than anything, and then the moment passes.

Oh yah, did I tell you that I’ve wanted to live in a brand new house for a long time? But it’s always the “sharm” of the older ones that seems to get me.

Every single New York day so far, I learn something new. Today it was all about plaster. Yes, it’s a Sharmed Life!