I live near the water, and work near and on the water, but have never been a “water” person…I get violently seasick when messing about in boats, so much so that I have to take a Dramamine when I have to clean one for the summer season.  I have never been on a jet-ski, never been on water-skis, and in fact, not since my vision became so poor as a teenager, and I could no longer clearly see the shore, have I gone swimming in the ocean or dove into a wave…yet, I love the water.  I love how it sounds, I love how it smells, I love how it glimmers or crashes depending on the weather,  and I love how lucky I feel when I am reminded that people all over the planet never get to hear, breathe, see, or feel it…and that I can do all of these things every single day.

Of course we don’t drink the ocean…someday we might have to figure out how to make that happen, but for now, we are blessed, are we not, to have safe and easily obtained H2O?  I saw a photo recently on social media, it was a picture of a skeletal woman dressed in a blue piece of fabric feeding to a deathly skeletal child, some water, and the caption read something like, “so tell me about what a bad day you are having.”  I’ve been thinking about the photo for a few days now…and this morning woke up, went to pee, washed my hands, rinsed out the carafe, filled the coffee maker, and then went outside to water the flowers in pots on all my decks while the coffee dripped…and I realized that I used more water in those 17 minutes of my morning, WITHOUT EVEN THINKING ABOUT IT, than much of the world has for a whole day, for a whole family.  It’s so easy to take things for granted.  South Jersey might not be in such a catastrophic drought as California, but I think I am going to give a little more thought to how much water I use, and try to use less, not for any big bold environmental statement, but just because I was reminded this week how precious it is.