148. Water

The four of them have been instructed to clear the table and tidy the kitchen. It is the weekend and my husband and I are sitting at table sipping our drinks and admiring our wonderful brood obeying and helping their parents, each thinking we did a great job bringing them up. The drinks (alcoholic) probably helping us ignore the fact that they are at each other's throats, everyone of them hating the fact that he/she could be doing more work than the other. But how do you measure such things? Hence the fighting.

'I'm not putting that plate in the dishwasher! No way! I've practically loaded it on my own! And what have you done?'

'I've put everything in the fridge.'

'That's it! Here we go again! Baby (pulls a face at the same time) getting away with not helping because oh poor little one digit midget.'

Baby's pretending to be upset and offended. But then gets back to the frontline.

'I'm not wiping the table!'

And it goes on. Our golden rule is: do not interfere, if you do you're finished, you'll get caught up in the middle and no-one in their right mind wants to get caught in the middle of that kind of fight.

Yet something gets my husband's attention. The tap has been left running, water noisily pouring into a pot and soap suds building up until the sink looks like a bubble bath fit for a 1950's Hollywood star.

'Please! Turn the tap off now! Stop wasting water!'

The answer comes straight back.

'I'm not wasting water, I'm soaking the pot.'

'That's more than enough water! Turn the tap off! Don't waste so much water! You kids don't know how precious clean water is. Do you know that when I was ...'

'... WALKING ACROSS AFRICA ...' The four of them chant in unison and then they burst out laughing.

My husband ignores them and goes on to tell the story. They are even listening and I wonder why as they are bound to have heard that story before.

'I travelled for a while with a couple of French and an American. We'd stopped in a village and in the morning we were just sitting having coffee. The American was brushing his teeth and all the while the tap was running. We were just staring at him ... but he could not see the problem ... and the boy who had only an hour before walked a mile or maybe more ... I can't remember ... a long way to walk anyway, who had walked there to get the water ... And then walked back carrying the water ... and he was just staring at this foreigner watching his container being emptied in such a useless way. Then after what seemed like ages, one of the French guys got up and turned the tap off for him.  The american looked up to see who had done that. No-one said anything. We were just staring at the small water tank. ... I've always remembered this and when I see ...'

The four of them have been listening quietly. It makes me feel so nostalgic to see he four of them listening to a story told by their father. The story seems to make them think. They start asking their dad questions: was the water from a well and why did the boy who had gone to fetch the water that day did not shout at the American, each in turn saying what they thought and what they would have done.

They've quit the fighting for a while and it's good to be able to chat about this. No arguments, no petty bickering. Just a talk with everyone agreeing about the necessity even here and now to make sure we do not waste precious clean water. 

The following evening my husband is at the sink. He squirts too much dishwashing liquid into a pan and is pouring water to get all the soap bubbles going, because like so many men, he is convinced that the pan will thus wash itself and then someone will just have to rinse and dry it and put it away. Easy. It seems to me that he is letting the tap run for a little too long and so I come up to him and turn it off. He looks at me.

'Time to head back to Africa. With the wife this time.'