That Small, Shared Sanctuary

I don’t think Virginia Woolf had a bathroom in mind when she wrote about a room of her own…….. and yet it is a sort of sanctuary. A hot shower on a cold morning is my idea of bliss. I do my best imagining with water streaming in my face. My blogs are just the fraction remembered that didn’t go down the drain. These days the two well-placed grab-bars keep me upright so I won’t end up taking a bath in the shower.

For our good-bad president L.B.J. the bathroom was the room where it happened. There are photos of him barking orders or even conducting interviews while on the pot. One wonders how many villages were eliminated with napalm as he eliminated his evening meal.

As a mere slip of a lad, I remember my days as admiral of the fleet launching my two sailboats in the bathtub. Lava soap must have contained pumice for hardcore filth while Lifebuoy took care of the rest. The shampoo was something called tincture of green soap followed a fine-comb for no good reason I can think of. Did I sing? Of course. To my tone-deaf ear I was Nat Cole or Sinatra. It may be why our neighbors never spoke to me.

I don’t recall fighting for the bathroom in the morning. Our schedules must have meshed. However there were minor skirmishes for the shared bathroom among my three daughters getting ready for school. My deaf daughter would happily test her hearing aid batteries by bellowing a rendition of her favorite songs as she imagined them. Somehow, we all survived.  

Bathtubs can be a life and death matter. Elvis died in one, without his blue suede shoes, as did Lenny Bruce. Thomas Merton, priest / poet was electrocuted as he got out of the tub.

However, Winston Churchill liked to immerse himself presumably without his cigar. He demanded that his water remain at precisely 98 degrees which required continuing additions of hot water. No wonder Stalin had his way at Yalta. William Howard Taft, at 320 pounds, got stuck in one. It was rumored that when he entered, enough tub water was displaced to flood some hotel room.

In American politics  the country may be divided between those who shower before going to work as opposed to those who shower when they come home. Unfortunately, the next election may be decided by those who do not shower at all.

As the bathroom is the only locked door in the house it becomes the small room for large acts, some forbidden. It is a hiding place from the madding crowd where a cigarette can be smoked, a banned book read or a solitary haven for deep breaths and recentering.