Tears ran down my face as I frantically called my mother again. This was not the first time the creek had flooded, but it was the first time it had reached the foundation. It was the first time it had overtaken the road. She was stranded 30 minutes away by her own flooded roads. Our house was in the valley, with no sidewalks in sight to take me to the safety of a neighbour uphill.
Normally we loved the house, as long as we ignored the ivy covered backyard and the trees that precariously lined the creek bed. The healthy ones were beautiful, especially in fall, and it didn’t matter that they turned the house green with their shade. The sun shone just long enough for my roses and just short enough for my mother’s hydrangeas and gardenias. Squirrels ran happily across the roof, rabbits mostly avoided the neighbourhood cats, and frogs inexplicably appeared in the bathroom and were taken out again. And the creek was my escape, my domain with the granite slab as my throne.
Water created a different story. The rains brought it surging through the creek, running along the house, saturating the planting beds so often that I began to lose my roses to root rot and black spot. The trees were stripped of radiant autumn leaves and delicate spring flowers. Some days I would sit on the porch and revel in it. Other days, I would turn away, hoping that the plants wouldn’t completely wash away.
After the storm, though, the light would filter through raindrop leaves. The birds would sing in their trees again, and I would make my way down the precarious steps to watch the creek surge subside. As the flooding subsided that particular day though, I watched the water carry away everything that had once stood around my granite throne and turned away.