Wash, Rinse, Repeat
Once a week, I shower alone. Porn stars aren’t seen naked as often as I am. When I shower with my small guest, I am either holding her, or she is sitting in between my feet that are frozen in the official hopscotch placement of 3-4 to make room for her small – yet everywhere – body.
I lather my hair next to the shower wall, perfecting the look of Quasimodo (head on shoulder, one eye open) while keeping faithful watch over my splashing companion. I allow the soap to slowly migrate down the fiberglass to avoid the risk of burning her delicate corneas. This process moves like molasses or a wagon on the Oregon Trail, weighed down by too many sacks of flour and Cholera.
I slowly crouch like a cave woman, in a position that screams “I have made FIRE!” Soap in eyes, I blindly search for my washcloth and consider my choice of body wash. To replenish and restore my skin (currently serving a life sentence of dryness without possibility of parole), I could use something with scrubbing beads that smell of empty promises, but instead grab the 3-in-1 No More Tears baby wash, knowing that the best hope of completing this shower with moderate success is to allow my limbs to serve as soap sprayers and vinyl mop strips like those at the local car wash. My ‘soapy seconds’ are recycled onto the hair, face and body of the uninvited guest at my cleanliness cotillion.
This is your shower on drugs.
On Sunday, I shower solo. On Sunday, while the world is praising their God or wearing foam fingers in celebration of their preferred suited victor, I am searching for any excuse to stand for two more minutes completely alone, upright and under water that has not been heat checked and rechecked for baby-level Defcon-5 temperature appropriateness.
Then, something invariably happens. Guilt creeps in like a guilt-mongering guilt-o-meter, measuring my guilt at an all time high. Because when your time is never your own, having a moment alone feels odd. And tucked inside the happiness of having it, you start to plant and water a small seed of questioning in your core. Do I deserve this time alone when, just downstairs, children are hungry and crying and asking and asking and asking? Should I give this up, too, for the greater good, or to administer the perfect crust removal?
No.
On Sundays, in the chaos of preparing for a new week, I find peace, restoration and humanity in my 15 minutes of watery solitude. My church is the Lady of the Indoor Plumbing, and her patron saint, Ives.
And a choir of Dove sings Hallelujah.
Bethany Thies is a mother of four, writer and rehabilitated gypsy who now calls Vermont home. She can change a diaper in 22 seconds and is the proud author of the chronic sarcasm and tom-foolery blog, Bad Parenting Moments.
