A Dour Shower

Our shower situation has just become too complicated for my liking.And I used to love showers! They’re so lovely! When I was a kid I used to spend so much time in the shower that my family would wonder about me. One time (we lived in Florida, so I was between ages 7-9, and were in the hot tub at the time) my mom and brother were trying to figure out what I did in the shower for 45 minutes. They were acting out how much time they spent shampooing and soaping, demonstrating that it definitely shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes and exclaiming that, What could I possibly be doing in there for so long!? I remember panicking and telling them, “I…I spend more time on my privates.” Looking back on it, how did my mom not give me a major side-eye for this?


In truth, I would make believe in the shower. I would act out complex stories. Sometimes they involved me being trapped in a room rapidly filling with water and I was waiting to be rescued while trying to find a way to escape. Sometimes they involved me practicing kissing on the glass door (you had to first draw the face of the kissee in the steam on the door, lips included). I really should have told Mom and JP the truth…isn’t kissing an imaginary glass man less embarrassing than spending a lot of time on your privates?

When I was away from the horrid college dorm shower experience (flip flops and scummy surfaces do not a happy shower make), I was back to my love of showering. My roommates would make fun of me because they’d hear me showering but couldn’t see any light coming from the bathroom. I took showers in the dark.


**This is your homework assignment, especially if you have a good water pressure: start the shower, light one candle, turn off the lights and step into the water. For a real thrill, leave out the candle. Extra points if you slowly back up into the water stream so the water jets move slowly up your spine and then slowly hit the base of your neck and move up to your scalp. Gives me the chills every time. It’s true what they say about appreciating your other senses when sight is taken away. **

We now have two bathrooms in our house. We have two people in our house (not for long!). Both of us take showers in the same bathroom. That shower is not in the bathroom attached to the room we sleep in.

When Michael and I moved into our first apartment after getting married, Michael would get ready in the extra bedroom because he didn’t want to wake me up by turning on the lights and making noise getting ready (isn’t he sweet?). He did the same thing at the next place we lived and he does the same thing now, except that now I think he just likes having his own space to get ready in the morning.

We have a very nice master bathroom shower. It’s a standing glass shower (perfect for practicing kisses, too bad I have a real man to practice on now!). The problem is that there is no ceiling on our shower and there is no door to our bathroom, so the steamy air just floats away into oblivion, leaving me cold and shivering in the shower. This was especially troublesome when we had a hot water restrictor in the shower and I was really only standing around in lukewarm water anyway.

So I started going over and taking showers in the guest bathroom too. It’s so complicated! Michael likes cool showers and hates fogging up the bathroom. I like coming out of the shower looking like a cooked lobster, more steam the better. Now he sometimes takes his shaving materials away to shave away from the steam room, meaning we’re both running around the house going to different bathrooms for our different purposes. Other times I try to take a cooler shower and he leaves the door open to let the steam out. Those times I wait around in the shower until he hands me my towel over the top so I don’t have to expose myself to the bitter 78’ cold. (I make a quick “Meow!” sound if he doesn’t realize it’s time for the towel toss.) It’s all just too much to have to think about at 6 in the morning.

I miss the old days. Like my dear friend Anne Shirley would say, the shower used to have so much scope for imagination! Today it’s totally a utilitarian device.

Let's bring back the enjoyable shower! Let's reclaim it in the name of make believe!