Opinion: Life in Asheville without water and how to take a bath in a fruit bowl
How to take a bath in a fruit bowl? You will need:
Two bottles of water, Walmart-temperature
One bottle’s worth of water boiling in the kettle
Yellow fruit bowl from the back of TJ Maxx
Measuring cup
Washcloth
Soap
Combine all ingredients in yellow bowl. Stand in the shower naked. Try the knob just in case you don’t actually have to do this.
Silence. You live in South Asheville where the water has already been gone for 48 hours.
Bend at the waist.
As per the city, the water may remain off for 24 more hours. Or 48. The YMCA is closed. People on morning shift at Walmart didn’t get bathroom breaks until 3 p.m. when the port-a-potties were hauled in.
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Swish soap around in water. Remember that some people in Africa bathe like this all the time. So, probably, do people more ecologically conscious than you: For example, the guy in that YouTube tour of the self-sustaining commune. Realize this is why people have rain barrels, composting toilets, wells. It’s why they at least know where the creek is. But you just moved here from Pennsylvania. Surely the Sweeten Creek Road you drive home on every day has an aquatic parallel, but where do you get over the bank?
Begin with the washcloth on the back of your neck and shoulders. Ring it over the bowl. Think of the Haitian woman you read about in the news years ago. She had those twin babies at her breast and not enough water and food for the three of them together. Remember that people need a lot of water to live and that to live well they have to have water that’s clean. Try not to think about how much of this gold you have poured down the drain in your lifetime for no reason at all. Try not to remember last week, when everything smelled good: the Christmas brisket bubbling in the oven, the floor freshly scrubbed with Fabuloso, the spearmint oil wafting out of the diffusers, that luxurious second pot of coffee brewing.
Add one cup of water and one squirt of shampoo into your hair, scrub, and drain into the bowl. Use three cups to rinse, remembering the city workers toiling in the ground on this December night. As you told your gummy worm-ogling child in the Walmart checkout line, “We should pray for the people who work on the city water.”
“Why?”
“Because — well — imagine that you work really hard on something and then suddenly all the parts break — at the same time!”
Wash your legs, your feet, everything else, until nothing remains in the bowl but two inches of leftover water cloudy with Lever 2000.
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After this bath, you will feel not only clean but cleaner than usual because you started so dirty. Your nightgown will feel so soft you should be lounging in the Taj Mahal. Carry the blue measuring cup out of the shower like Phrasikleia bearing the flower. Unlike every other bath you have ever taken, during this one you know exactly what you have done.
As the days go by and the water stays off, learn what it will it take to flush the toilet once a day, with margin to do it wrong the first time: 24 bottles of water plus the leftovers from last night’s pasta pot plus the ice from outside with the leaves drained out of it plus the two inches in your bowl.
When the water comes on that evening, let it flow brownish and warm over your hands into the Christmas popcorn can. Rejoice! Wash dishes! Believe this to be the end of your troubles!
In the morning, turn on the kitchen sink.
Nothing.
Regret your choices. You didn’t even think to fill the bathtub.
Panic, then take stock of the treasures you have already: Baby wipes. That knockoff bleach spray you bought after everyone got the bug (precious then because it contained bleach, precious now because it contains water). Working burners. The Christmas tree still alight. Butter and eggs in the fridge.
The next day: still no running water. Pull three bottles from your dwindling cache. Boil one. Fill your yellow bowl. Rinse. Repeat.
Finally, load the kids and dog in the car. Drive nine hours north for New Year’s even though you didn't plan to.
First rest stop, Virginia. Marvel at the water plummeting down the toilet bowl, spurting out the sink. Praise the Romans, builders of the aqueduct. Praise the inventor of the pipe. Praise God.
Chelsea Boes lives in Arden and works as a writer for WorldKids Magazine in Biltmore Village.
This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Asheville Christmas water outage: How to take a bath in a fruit bowl
