Women Are Water

It’s a popular illustration by freshman professors, then co-opted by evangelicals- or the other way around. Whichever came first, the chicken or the egg, the visual is the same.

Someone stands at the front of the audience at a table with an empty jar. The jar is surrounded by large rocks, small pebbles, and a pitcher of water. Depending on what point they are trying to make, they might ask the audience what would happen if they put the pebbles in first. (The large rocks won’t fit, of course.).

This emulates how you are supposed to prioritize your values (the big rocks) and then add the extras in later. “Is it full?” They’ll ask before they pour the water in. Yes, you’ll say. But the jar holds all the water in the pitcher, poured out to cover every surface. You were wrong- there was room all along, you just need to add everything in the right order. Executive functioning skills at their finest.

The Jesus-y version is a bit different. The things you carry, the large rocks and the little rocks, can all be covered by Christ. Every surface.

I’m unsure why this illustration came to me this week, the week of Mother’s Day. I’m sure I haven’t seen it in over twenty years. But it was the first thing I thought of when I awoke in a cold sweat, wondering how I was going to pay for soccer. That the big one needs new sneakers. The kitchen sink is still leaking. That the blood work results were weird. The back brake light on the car is out and I’ve already gotten a ticket, but I can’t fix it yet.

In the blasphemous silence of the 3 a.m. rabbit hole, my spirit cried out.

It is the women.

Women are the water.

We are the ones who hold the boulders suspended in jars at the same height as the pebbles. Like Luisa in Encanto, Rocks digging into our shoulder blades, we cradle the craggy surfaces of the ones we love and bow beneath the weight that would have crushed a spine or sinew or some other human form of anatomy.

But.

Women are water.

We hover over every imperfection, smoothing ragged edges. We coat every angle of every value, drive and desire with slick surfaces slippery enough to propel out of the narrow mouth of the jar. We watch the rocks get thrown in and out, but there are no fingers nimble enough to pick us out after they are done with us- we slip right through.

We are the water in all the work jars, running over every email chain, soothing each minor conflict that glows crimson, reassuring the hand that is pouring us out not to worry, we’ve got it covered.

We are the water in all the church jars, rushing past initiatives and removing obstacles and freeing riverbeds, the silt at the bottom remnants of our movement. The ones that bob to the top, buoyed by the the work of our bodies are the only ones visible.

We are the water in all the community jars, lapping borders and boundaries of school systems and women’s clubs and fundraisers for first aid squads and food pantries for families in need. We are so diluted we run right into each other- an arm, a leg, a strand of hair gone gray. One long stream. One endless river. One unbroken tributary. We seamlessly blend into one.

When I was young, I believed water was magic. There was something in it that would heal whatever wounded me, if only I let it. If I needed it to- it would hold me. Water gives life and food and shelter to species we don’t even know exist yet. It can glow in the dark.No living thing can thrive without it.

The kind of realization that woke me in the middle of the night was the kind of water that seeps into the floor boards from the kitchen that can’t seem to stop crying. The water that flows out to cover everything so that nothing goes unprotected. The kind that can spread so thin, it might appear as if it’s not even there.

But I still believe the magic part. The kind that isn’t diluted or washed out but powerful and reflective and deep. The kind that holds all the keys to life and knows it. The kind that could have never been contained to a vessel, on a table, poured out like a specimen.

And the longer I see the table, the pebbles and the shaky hand in my mind’s eye- the more I want out of the jar. All of us, out of the jar.

The more I want the fucking magic back.

The more I’m convinced I can’t contain it.

So maybe, this time, I’ll just let it flow.

Women are water, after all.