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Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.
– Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
The first time it happened was in the fall of 1996, upon returning from our honeymoon in Quebec City and opening the door to our Bangor apartment.
The castaway sitting atop a tower speaker as the waters surged below was the first thing I noticed. Kitty, the cat who did not like me nor I her, shot me an accusatory stare that said, “Somehow you’re responsible for all this.” Below her tiny island, our belongings bobbed and floated around our second-story apartment.
Stunned by the accusatory glance, it took me a second to gather my wits and dash into the apartment to find the source of the leak — or, more accurately, the source of the newly formed tributary that would soon make its way into the Penobscot River and eventually the Atlantic Ocean.
The source turned out to be the toilet, which was gushing water from the supply line like an uncapped fire hydrant on a steamy summer day. As I bent down to close the valve, my frantic landlord ran into the bathroom and shot me the same accusatory stare that Kitty had moments earlier.
Because water likes to travel downhill, the water from my apartment flooded the apartment below me. It damaged a lot of what we owned and what the person below me owned, but it turned out not to be my fault. The landlord later admitted he had replaced, to save a few cents, a metal washer with a plastic washer while doing a plumbing repair. Sometimes it is expensive to be cheap, I guess.
A few years later, waters would rise in a different home. This time, a supply line to my refrigerator’s ice maker cracked. Water pooled on the floor and gushed from behind the fridge. Luckily I was home when it happened, but I had to turn off the water to the whole house to get it to stop. The next day, the plumber arrived as promised, between the hours of 8 a.m. and 4 p.m.
So, because “water, water, everywhere” has been a motif in my life, I bought water alert devices that message my phone when they sense tidal forces occurring in my basement, bathroom or refrigerator. That was back in the winter of 2023, around the same time we brought Teddy, our golden retriever puppy, home to Cundy’s Harbor.
When you receive a water alert on your phone, it’s like receiving a message from three sticks of exploding dynamite. And here is the best-case scenario when you get a warning — you or someone in your household is actually around to check it out.
Alas, no one was home the first time I received a water alert. Where was I? I was checking the firmness of avocados while grocery shopping at Cook’s Corner when the dynamite detonated.
“WATER DETECTED IN THE GUEST BATHROOM!” the message blared from the produce aisle.
Remembering Kitty’s scowl, I abandoned my cart and dashed to my car.
As I zoomed home as fast as one can zoom while going slightly above the speed limit, I imagined the disaster that awaited me. When I opened the door to the house, would water gush out, pushing me under like a mighty ocean wave? Would I need to call FEMA?
After several agonizing minutes, I pulled into my driveway and rushed inside to discover … no water on the floor of the guest bathroom and no water alert device, either. But although there was no water, the frantic shrill of the alarm cascaded from every wall in every room of the house.
Rushing from room to room, I eventually discovered Teddy the puppy chewing on something in my bedroom.
Water alert alarms, I learned that day, cannot tell the difference between water, water everywhere and dog slobber.
