Bathtub

I climbed in – the tub already a quarter filled – and slid underneath the water, hoping to cease my shivering. I gripped a plastic red cup, a portable mug of sorts for soup. Tonight, though, the cup only housed dirty bath water, carried from the bottom of the tub to the top of my knees. My legs, always so long, jutted north like an iceberg. I mindlessly scooped and poured, scooped and poured as my body adjusted to its new temperature.

At age eleven, I still took baths. And, even though eleven sounds incredibly young, you think you are three-fourths grown by the time you enter sixth grade. Lockers, school dances. When my friend Darlene came over before one of these dances, she requested to use the shower. But, then she asked a very adult question: should she tuck the shower curtain in the tub? I tried to play it cool. “NoOH.” Once Darlene turned on the faucet, I bolted downstairs – “Mom, do we tuck shower curtains into the bathtub? And, if so, why?” Luckily, Darlene, more mature than me, knew how to handle the curtain.

I know exactly why I was hesitant to switch from baths to showers. For all of my eleven years, I had been mistaken as older. That’s what happens when you are a 5’0” at age ten and then 5’4” by age eleven. Even when mom and I watch home videos together, we cackle at the way I carried myself – a sage. The bath felt like something from childhood in which I could cling. Just me and my young muscles (so many Charlie horses) soaking quietly in the tub, letting my mind breathe, scooping water onto my legs, watching droplets cascade down their personal water slide.

However, baths are also spaces of vulnerability. When I was eight, I had a friend named Lauren Miller – just for a year. She moved in and out of town rather quickly. I considered her to be rich because she had a jacuzzi tub in her bathroom. Her mom encouraged us to try out the tub, let the jets relax our small muscles. I really didn’t want to go in without a bathing suit, but Lauren, the youngest of three sisters, felt totally comfortable in the nude…or so I thought. My baby vagina had already started sprouting hairs, so the entire jacuzzi experience resulted in me fielding questions about puberty, only known to me from a library book I had read with my mom.

Ultimately, though, the bathtub is a place of nightly rituals. When I was smaller than eleven and eight – and still needed assistance and an audience – I’d tilt my head back as mom massaged Johnson & Johnson’s baby shampoo into my scalp. If I scrunch my face and close my eyes, I can still smell it – grapefruit and jasmine and violets and chemicals. Mom would encourage me to keep my eyes tightly shut as she poured warm water from the faucet onto my head with that mustard yellow measuring cup stolen from the kitchen, never to be used for cakes and pies but, instead, soaps and suds. I’d eagerly stare at my fingertips as they transformed into raisins. And, when the water got so unbearably cold, mom would kneel on the tiles with arms outstretched, one side of the towel in each hand. She’d wrap me in tight, helping me transition from sea to land. 

Tonight, I soaked in the tub. To feel nostalgic. To feel young. To feel vulnerable. To feel loved. To remember.