Well Being.

The day before my wedding, I went to check the well at the farmhouse where I was staying and where the wedding was to be held the next day.  The farmhouse got all of its water via an electric pump from this well and it was a big and professionally engineered well.  I would check it once in a while in its neat little wooden covered hut, and I always tipped the large wooden disc cover up so I could stare down into the deep cool clear water.  It was late summer, dank and florid with earthy smells.  I could even smell the wet granite stones that lined the well. 

               This time, as I lifted the cover up, I was surprised to see a dead rodent floating on the surface in the center.  I could see that no such creature could get up the granite walls of the well once it had fallen in.  After it died, it had remained floating and apparently slowly decayed on a lake of glass. Various grey and blue hues had spread out widely in concentric circles to cover the entire surface of the water in a sheen of decomposition.  In the middle of the target was a hapless little bag of fur, tufted carelessly, laying quietly atop the water like a tiny dropped jacket.  I couldn’t see whether the fur had yet released the marionette of mouse skeleton to pirouette eerily through the cool water to the stone-cold bottom.

               I pulled what I could out of the water with a big screen dipper used for taking the occasional leaves off the surface. 

               Back at the farmhouse, I thought about it.  Hmmm.  Big wedding tomorrow with people coming from all over.  Guests were staying with us.  Water for cooking, food prep.  Water for showers/bathing and drinking.  Almost immediately I thought about calculating how much bleach I could add to the water to ‘purify’ it.  I knew about this stuff from being an Army Officer and there were calculations one could work to make water potable for ‘field’ situations; bleach, in proper ratio, was the simple little miracle ingredient.  I typically had that type of Army manual around, found it, and decided to do it.  I was a trained and smart little Army Officer and really had no second thoughts other than an abstract interest in the implications of a bad outcome.  Ha.  But I was pretty sure about myself back then and didn’t even devote much time to worrying.  The night before a large home farmhouse wedding and reception with all the fixin’s tends to be a little busy.   

               I measured the volume of the water in the well, calculated, added the bleach in carefully counted ounces, and stirred.  The next day we had the wedding, everything went great, and nobody ever got sick.  I would occasionally tell the dead-mouse-in-the-well story to various of those wedding guests years later and of course everyone was (safely!) aghast.

               Later, I would sometimes wonder about a couple of things here.  How could I have decided so cavalierly upon my ‘water treatment’ scheme versus simply buying lots of bottled gallon water from a supermarket for the day?  Cost wasn’t a concern compared to what we’d already spent on the wedding―I just didn’t think of it.  And, with a sad furtive shudder, I’d also wonder about the last hours of that mouse: the swimming, the dark and cold, the exhaustion, and whether maybe, near the end, the mouse had had a stricken sentient realization.   

               So.  Time went on.   Jobs.  Cars.  Houses.  Kids. Years.

               And then I got divorced. The divorce, and subsequent legal proceedings, have been a struggle. My beautiful children were pulled away from me through a family court legal system that cannot, or will not, recognize bad-faith and malice. I haven’t seen my little children, Autumn and Lincoln, in years. And I’m swimming. And it’s dark and cold down here. I cannot rest.  I’m alone. And I’m very, very tired.