Elixir
Write a new post in response to today’s one-word prompt.
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In the early morning, my elixir is coffee. Stevia for sweetness, and French Vanilla creamer for richness, but not too much. I like the taste of the coffee, and sometimes I drink it straight.
Later in the day, hot tea in the cold weather and iced tea during the hot months.
And all day, every day the elixir of life: Water. Lots of water. I keep a glass at my desk when I’m working, and I empty it several times each day. At home, it gets carried with me around the house as I go about my chores.
I don’t do the bottled water thing unless I’m traveling. Never saw the sense in buying what I can get free out of the tap. Of course, we have well water and it tastes good.
When I was a kid, we’d take a trip out to Marshall, Minnesota to visit my mom’s father and his wife, Grandma Millie, whom we loved as much as if she had been our blood relative. But the water out there? Ugh! It was truly gross. Grandma Millie kept a pitcher in the fridge all the time, because the only way you could get it down was if it was too cold to taste.
America is blessed with an abundance of water. Rarely do we have to boil it to purify it, because we’ve learned so much about water treatment to make it safe. We are greatly privileged in this country to have so much potable water, and we take it for granted. We waste it.
My parents grew up in the Depression years, when water wasn’t plentiful where they were. You didn’t waste water. You didn’t let the tap run while you brushed your teeth. You put only an inch or so of water in the bathtub. You threw dishwater into your flower garden, and laundry water doused the vegetable garden. If the only water you had was what you could collect in a cistern when it rained, then everyone took a bath in the same water–and you didn’t start with the cleanest person first. You started with the men who had been out working, and were dusty, grimy, greasy. They got the hot water. By the time you got down to the smallest person, the water wasn’t very appetizing.
That’s all a little bit disgusting to us these days, but it was reality for thousands during those harsh years. Most of the time, you took a sponge bath at the sink. A tub bath was a once-a-week event.
Well. Isn’t it interesting where one little word takes us. From coffee to sponge baths. And it all depends on that wonderful elixir of life, water.
Just Writing! 