Water main broke two towns over and got me thinking, as I often do, about water: the importance of it, how we take it for granted, how it seems just so unimportant in the course of our day—it’s just there, like air. Who’s doing a party for water? Hip, hip hooray for water, is certainly not a sentiment on ANY greeting card I have ever seen. Unless, of course, there is a drought and water is rationed, or a water main breaks, and you can’t even use the toilet, and suddenly boiling your water for even a day is an incredible inconvenience.
It is now ten years since I first met Gershom Sizomu, now Rabbi Sizomu, the spiritual leader of the Abayudaya in Uganda. He had been here only a couple of months when I asked him what he liked best about the U.S. He smiled at me and said, without hesitation, “It is so wonderful to go into the shower and turn the knob and have all this water, wonderful water pouring down one me. It’s a miracle. That’s the best thing.” Almost every day since then, when I take a shower, I lift my shampoo bottle and make a silent toast to Gershom.
