Once as a child, naked by my tub, I watched water gush from our faucet, its stream fading my image in the mirror, its thrust bubbling my bath with foam. I marveled at its abundant glistening stream that seemed an endless glow of silver light.
I wondered how this liquid, hot for bath, cold for thirst, obedient to each subtle twist of wrist, how such a precious as water could be free? What if we had to pay for it like milk that arrived in bottles at our door!
Of course, I did not know bout my parent’s water bill or that this water came from high in the Sierras, a valley named Hetch Hetchy, word for grass that fed the Miwok. Did not know what it cost the Miwok to flood their valley, robbed of home, community, their link to spirit world, so this water could flow through pipes to fill my tub.
I knew my water came in pipes, but did not know all water does not come in pipes — how many women in the world must carry water on their head from wells and rivers or make their living washing clothes along some muddy bank where flukes from nails that sailed on slave ships can turn their urine red, make their kidneys fail.
Later I learned how water is abused and must be treated. How it is polluted, hoarded, stolen from the dispossessed. How wars are fought for water and treasures in its depths. Water, not an endless flow, but finite like our life. So much in childhood I did not know, yet even in unknowing at that moment by my tub, I sensed its sanctity.
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Ruth Gunn Mota grew up in Palo Alto, California. After college she lived ten years in Brazil and then worked as an international health trainer throughout Latin America and Africa before returning to Santa Cruz, California where she now resides and focuses on writing poetry or facilitating poetry groups in her community. Over fifty of her poems have been published in online and print journals.
