Wet Bread - If the Great Flood Really Happened, It So Should've Happened Like This

According to something I just read online (although shockingly, it might be one of the few online pieces not to be completely accurate), one of the most ambitious plans ever masterminded by God, was nearly botched. If the snafu hadn't been caught in time, someone God intended to survive the Great Flood would have been killed, which, if we take the story literally, would have altered the future of mankind. I'm not sure if this is part of the Hebrew Scriptures or not. If it is, then this is old news. Still, I didn't know about it so maybe you didn't either.

Noah's Ark
Copyright, Teece Aronin

Now, I have no intention of getting all religious on you, but I will acknowledge that, of course, many people believe God is perfect and by extension so are His plans. So I'm not even going there. I'm simply sharing what I read which was that, for some reason - God only knows why - God told Noah to destroy the first person to announce the flood's onset. But when Noah's daughter-in-law, Aphra was baking bread, water suddenly poured from the oven. 

Understandably, Aphra exclaimed that the flood was commencing, and since she happened to be the first to do so, God had to quickly shift gears so Noah wouldn't kill her. In God's plan, Aphra had to survive to help repopulate the earth post-flood.

So, I got to thinking: How might all this have gone down, and what gears might God have shifted to save Aphra from a terrible fate? Consider this possible scenario:

It's a hot, humid day and the forecast is calling for rain. Aphra stands in the kitchen about to take a loaf of bread from the oven. She is cranky, not only because it's hot, but because she's pregnant, has a headache, and the oven hasn't worked right for days. 

But mostly, Aphra is cranky because her husband, Ham, and a bunch of kooks, specifically Ham's father and two brothers, are next door in the backyard - again - hammering away - still - and the father, the biggest kook in the bunch, is claiming he will save them all, plus a whole boatload of animals, from a flood. Now really, how asinine is that? 

Young Aphra and Ham live next door to Ham's parents, Noah and Emzara, and this has been a sticking point for much of their marriage because Aphra detests the region's swampy summers. Noah and Emzara moved to this area, popular with seniors, when they retired, and Aphra resents Ham for dragging her here too. Ham exhibits an almost sappy adoration for his parents, but Aphra finds them intrusive and preachy. Today, every noisy smack from a hammer is making her resentment stronger and her headache thumpier. Some linguists believe that this is where the term "pounding headache" comes from.

Anyway, since construction began on that thing next door, Ham's two brothers and their wives have been staying with him and Aphra. And lately, animals have been brazenly strolling in from outside, putting their feet up on the furniture and smelling up the house.

Now Aphra stands in the kitchen, blowing her bangs out of her eyes. A cloth is tied around her hair to keep it out of her way but a loose, raven-colored lock has escaped the cloth to stick against the back of her sweaty neck.

She remembers what the locals say, that it isn't the heat, it's the humidity, and that's certainly the case today. The air is suffocating, and Aphra muses that one could practically drown just from breathing. She dismisses the thought as crazy. No one would be drowning around here anytime soon. And there wasn't going to be any stupid flood either. God, Noah was such a nut-ball.

With impulsive fury, Aphra goes to the kitchen window and yells in the direction of her in-laws' backyard. Immediately, all hammering halts, and every man freezes dead in his tracks, straining to hear. Ever since the ark, they've all been living in similar doghouses so this could have been the shriek of any one of their wives. As each man prays it isn't his, there comes another shout:

"Ham! I said, get your @$$ in here!" 

With the exception of Ham, all the men sigh with relief, and construction resumes. Ham straightens and looks in the direction of his prize donkey grazing in their backyard. Why would Aphra want him to bring it in the house? Then the realization dawns: Ham is the @$$ his wife is yelling for.

A momentary sadness darkens Ham's gentle features. He is embarrassed by his wife's public use of coarse language. Would she kiss her mother with that mouth? And his own mother would never say such things. Still, Aphra is a sweet, good natured girl overall so he will overlook this one small flaw.

"Coming, honey!" he calls. "Be right back," Ham tells the others. Striving to be cheerful, Ham heads for home. But once in the house, he sees his wife's expression and all hope is dashed.

"What?" he asks.

"When are you going to realize that I matter more than that crackpot out there?" Aphra wants to know.

"Baby," Ham answers imploringly, "that's my dad. Please don't talk like that. He's been nothing but good to me all my life."

"Really? Then why did he name you Ham?" his wife shoots back. "You are named after the meat of an unclean beast. What kind of father names his son after something filthy and disgusting?"

Ham winces. He has wondered this himself. His parents are strict Jews. Why would his father have named him Ham? And even if the idea was his mother's, why would his father have allowed it?  

"Well, I'm sure there was a good reason," says Ham. The defense is as weak as his manhood.

"Yeah, right!" his wife barks. "And here's another thing: I want you to stop messing around with that dumb boat!"

"Uh, actually honey, it's an ark," Ham corrects with instant regret.

"Alright - ARK!" Aphra roars like a pregnant, hormone-riddled fire-breathing dragon. "Do you have any idea how many things need fixing around here? Take that oven for instance! You've been promising to fix it for days, but no! The ARK comes first! You fix that oven and you fix it now!"

With that, Aphra yanks on the oven door and a huge rushing gush of water erupts from the opening, smacks into the couple's faces and soaks them before spilling to the floor.

"Jesus, Mary and Joseph!" Aphra yells, then wonders dimly who those people might be and why she would be yelling their names. "It's the . . ."

Knowing his father will kill the first person to announce the flood, Ham clamps a hand over his wife's mouth then tells Aphra for once in her life to just shut the  #*?% up. And since he's on a roll, he tells her to lighten up on the G#??*&n swearing. 

Ham lifts Aphra into his arms and hustles her over to his parents' backyard where everyone jumps aboard the freshly completed ark. Aphra looks embarrassed, and some linguists believe that this is where the term sheepish comes from.

"I'm sorry, Ham," she says. "You were right. There really is going to be a fl . . ." 

Hams's hand shoots out like lightening to silence her again, accidentally bumping her head against a signpost pointing the way to Alligator Alley.   

For some reason not clear to Aphra, seeing her bump her head makes her husband smile.

And some linguists believe that this is where the term happy accident comes from. 

How to Properly Socialize Your Infant

Though we usually got along well in principle, there could be a bit of head-butting between my former mother-in-law and me. When my daughter was a year old, the chief issue was my mother-in-law's concerns that I hadn't gotten out of the house enough since Sydney was born and that it was probably because I was depressed. Further, she worried, if I wasn't getting out enough, then neither was Syd and that meant the baby wasn't being properly socialized. 

Syd, seen here a few years older,
learning what a plate glass
window looks like.

I disagreed but who was I other than one of the two parties in question and the mother of the other?

But it was stunning how quickly we called a truce when the family patriarch, Grandpa Sid (my mother-in-law's father) announced that he was taking the family on a cruise. 

There were quite a few of us going, too. In addition to Grandpa Sid, my mother-in-law and I, were my father-in-law, my sister-in-law, my then-husband, Michael, and Grandpa Sid's caregiver. 

Michael and the baby and I spent the night before departure at his parents' and while hugging her, Michael accidentally bruised his mother's rib. I reminded her unhelpfully that love hurts. 

The next day, my father-in-law handed us the matching t-shirts he'd had made with embroidered nautical motifs and the cheerful little message: Grandpa Sid's Family Cruise. There was even an extra-tiny version for the baby.

That first night on the ship, I was alone with Sydney in our cabin. She was having trouble falling asleep so I stepped onto the balcony and held her - not like Michael Jackson held his baby on a balcony, but silently and gently. Together we watched the moon reflected in a crooked jag across rough, slate-colored water. Hushing sounds from the waves, breezes kissing her face and the lilting motions of the ship put the baby right to sleep. 

Dinners on the cruise were extravagant, and Sydney was dressed like a princess for each one. One night we were served by a dignified waiter of mysterious national origin who reminded me of the late actor, Brock Peters. When my mother-in-law blew razzberries at Sydney, he dryly inquired, "And who's the baby, madame?" The waiter's question reassured me that my theories on infant socialization might be almost as sophisticated as my mother-in-law's. 

One afternoon, we all disembarked for a walking tour and my mother-in-law was excited that Syd would finally see the sun. She took turns with my father-in-law pushing the stroller, the entire time saying, "Look, Sydney! That's what a cloud looks like!" and "Look, Sydney! That's what a horse looks like!" and "Look, Sydney! That's what a manhole cover looks like!"

Then, either she or my father-in-law lost their grip on the stroller, and Syd began a speedy decent down a grassy embankment, all of us chasing after her. Faster and faster, she rolled until the stroller smashed into a chain link fence at the bottom of the hill, a loud ka-ching signaling the end of her ride.

By the time we caught up to her and took a good look, we saw that she was no worse off for the experience and seemed to have actually enjoyed herself. 

"See, Sydney?" I said, pretending to mash my hand into my face. "That's what a chain link fence looks like."

Then my mother-in-law, much to her credit, began to laugh, and her laughing made me laugh. And we laughed together hard . . . until we had to stop because it made her bruised rib hurt.