The Season of Inundation

I’ve been thinking a lot about the three seasons of ancient Egypt. The first season is Akhet, the time of inundation when the Nile floods, spreading fertile mud over the land. The next season is Peret, emergence, the time of planting and growing. The last season is Shemu, the time to harvest. Shemu ends with the return of the floods, and so it goes year after year. But it’s speeding up. I can barely get the seeds planted before the next inundation. These last couple of years have been almost constant flood. The 2024 election knocked me off my feet, as it did so many people. Each day has brought fresh blows. So much of what I believed about my country and the people in it has been washed away. So many harmed, in danger, belittled and silenced. So many ripped out of their lives and shut away in camps or deported to lands they never belonged to.  Their histories erased from official websites, museums, national parks. I have felt hopeless and powerless. In the spring of 2025, my 24-year-old daughter suffered a cryptogenic stroke, suddenly unable to feel anything on her entire right side, unable to find words or use them. She and I live alone together. I was able to get her to the ER at 5:30 am on a Monday morning, marking the beginning of weeks in the hospital followed by months in rehab. She is doing well now, a year later, still working toward recovery, trying to regain what she has lost. Maybe she will. More likely, she will continue to learn how to live with what she has. Meanwhile the very real rain crashes down from overburdened skies and higher ground is just not high enough. Whole communities have to reinvent themselves, learning to live with what they have left. We paddle on in this season of inundation. Another season will come, I tell myself. Surely emergence will come, and maybe one day we will celebrate our harvest.