Children at Bath Time
Monday, November 17th, 2008
Girly voices flow above the running water, amplified on the tiled floor and porcelain. The smells of soap and vapor seep into the bedroom and hall, and if it weren’t for the closed windows and pulled drapes, the house feels as fresh as spring time.
The trees are bare behind the houses. All day the wind has pulled at the frail tree branches that shed leaves in late October and have been burned in leaf piles. With the sun freshly lowered, the moonlight casts cool shadows on the street-parked cars and house fronts.
Inside, the warmth grows the more distance can be gained from the cold glass. Above the wash basin are six synthetic suns – light bulbs, one burned out – shining on the slick tile beach. My little girls’ skin tans in the fluorescent glow – little girls whose knees stick above the surface, surrounded by water, little islands unto themselves, just off the coast of the hot tub jets. Random toys float in motion with the rocking ocean top, the familiar rubber duck, a Great White bob atop the wash cloth swaddled on the tub bottom.
I swam with these girls on my back this summer. In water darker than this and where footing couldn’t be found. The water was above all our heads. They trusted me to be safe though I wasn’t sure. They are bigger now and braver even in this shallow water, but I wonder if the four months since then have made them lose trust in me or if I am any more confident.
The days can cause separation even if they are not necessarily spent apart. Small disagreements and mistakes can create distance, emotional and soon physical. Love is easier to lose than to gain. While it would seem that no one could squander it more than those new to it – the young – they are actually the most adept, the most forgiving.
Their parents, though, are familiar with something harsher. Mean reality between children and teenagers that humbles; real love dissolved among friends who began happily and wound up crippled; and those who spread disillusionment to level out the ones who seem to have found something together.
Then, from nowhere, the littlest one screams, shifting the mood from light-hearted to injustice, possibly murder. My girls who once were playing sweetly together are disagreeing noisily because a toy switched hands. Quiet solitude can not last forever and that point – along with the harsher realities of the real world – are most evident among children at bath time.
