Approximately 60% of my body is composed of water, according to real science. I have a sinus irritation problem, or perhaps allergies, but when I allow myself to sneeze, I find a goodly percentage of that expelled water not just in a tissue, but also on the inside of the lenses of my glasses. When I first noticed this phenomenon, I cried out, “What the snot?!” With all the sniffling and dripping that I do, it seems too much to expect me to have to clean both the exterior and the interior of my eyeball windshield.
When I would travel from St. Louis Missouri to Indianapolis Indiana to take my two youngest children back to their mother, my kids would whine and complain when I paused at every rest stop on Highway 70. “Dad!” my son would cry out. “Why are we stopping again?” I would claim that they needed to go to the restroom, but the real need was mine. They did not understand that when they were aged 7 and 8, but as they grew older, they came to know that it was Dad who needed to release the stream. They expelled audible sighs from the back seat as I pulled the car off the highway and toward the rest stop.
Years later, my youngest daughter brought my youngest granddaughter to my house so that I could spend time with her while her mother went elsewhere. Lauren announced to Myah, “Welcome to the house of tissues.” And it is true that my house has a lot of tissues, for my nose needs a lot of “tissue-time.” When I run out of boxes and the little packs of facial tissues, I will place a roll of toilet tissue on my desk. I must make sure that the toilet tissue is not the one-ply variety, as I can expel moisture from my nose with a force that will blow through that one ply and deposit the snot onto my hand, defeating the purpose of the tissue. Of course, that means a clean-up involving 78,000 more sheets of one-ply.
As I guard against the leakage from my nose and eyes, I remember 1993, when the Mississippi River flooded the St. Louis area. I watched from my 13th floor apartment as that mighty river tore a riverboat loose from its moorings and drove it into a low bridge. I may have sniffled in wonder and amazement, but I remember thinking of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) who wrote a poem called “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” It is from that poem that we got the expression, “water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink.” And the flood of 1993 did nothing to quench anyone’s thirst.
As I worked on this offering, I was conscious of the many times that I sniffed, wiped, and blew my nose. When I felt a tickling of the nasal lining, I took off my eyeglasses, reached for a packet of tissues and made a deposit in The First Bank Of Snot. Of course, in the water – as opposed to snot – category, there has been some leakage resulting from some tragedies that have touched me and my family. My first bride died last year, and my second died this year, and my three children and three grandchildren are grieving. I think of the two women who graced me with their time and gave me three children and remember what the author Frank McCourt wrote about his bladder being too close to his eye in reference to his beginning to cry about something.
And I water.
cjon3acd@att.net