The Shower

I’m not sure when, but at some point in high school I discovered a meditative ritual. As one of six kids in a home with one bathroom for several years, until my parents built an addition, I found privacy was at a premium. We had the traditional bathtub-shower combo. On occasion, when I would take a shower, I would sit down in the bottom of the tub to let the water flow over my head and my skin. I would close my eyes and listen only to the silence and the whoosh of the water. The contrast between the cool tile where I rested my forehead and the warm droplets sprinkling my skin sent shivers up my spine and gave me goosebumps. It brought me peace and warmth and security.

I continued the practice on every visit home from college, where the inconvenience and humiliations of showers in a dorm took over my usual comforts. Every visit home was an opportunity to spend a few minutes settling and reconnecting with the things that brought me peace. My Mom, my home with siblings and cats and dogs, my bed that was comfy and all mine.

My first summer of true independence came after college graduation. I had big plans. In preparation for graduate school, I had accepted a job in my alma mater’s communications office and agreed to a summer sub-lease on an apartment with four other women. My new life was about to begin! But, sadly, one by one everyone walked out on me. The first left because her dad wanted her to leave and he said a verbal agreement didn’t count for anything. Two others followed suit. The last to leave, a good friend, cried as she told me. With the others gone, she wouldn’t have enough in wages to cover her end and she wanted to go home. I made it easy on her, even as I panicked and my heart broke. My pay would cover the sublease, but I faced a solitary summer just because I had made a commitment and I was raised not to break a commitment. I stayed on. My boyfriend, my pre-pre-pre-fiancé, came to visit but said he couldn’t stay because he had told his high school friends he’d be around one last summer. When he left, I thought I’d die. I had never been so alone.

In this scenario, the shower became my refuge.  I buckled down and did the work. I hated being so alone, but I had a paycheck and some small kindnesses.  My boss and my professors sometimes had me over for dinner. The apartment I’d sublet was having work done and on almost a daily basis, the workers would leave me a donut or something after they’d gone. The public library gave me a borrower’s card though I had no documentation showing I was eligible. But, when I was sure I was home and alone, I’d take a shower. The shower was simple–white porcelain bathtub, white plastic wall, and a white linoleum floor. I’d start the shower, sit in the tub, close my eyes, and picture my mom’s house. I’d imagine the curtain next to me, the floor, the door, and what lay beyond. The shower at my childhood home was an odd peachy beige and for years we kept the same shower curtain with big, brown flowers on it. I remembered how the yellow light of the bathroom glowed through that brown curtain. It made me feel safe, and not so alone. I tried to convince myself, just for a minute, that I was home.

This practice continued into graduate school. The bathroom in my graduate housing during my first year was a shocking pink in every direction–the floor, the walls, the fixtures and walls were all the same color, much of it cracked. The curtain was the cheapest sort of white vinyl available. But the shower/tub unit still allowed me to close my eyes and leave that place. Don’t get me wrong–I actually loved graduate school most of the time. But my assigned roommate was a passive-aggressive introvert who never left the apartment and who would routinely make my days uncomfortable. There, in that particular shower, I found that I could not only return to my mother’s house for that sort of comfort but also to the summer sublet after college where, if nothing else, I had enjoyed quiet solitude. Nostalgia is funny in the way it can make you look back fondly even on a period that had carried some pain.

I repeated the pattern many times over as the years passed. My second year of grad school, when I shared an apartment with two great women who both had problematic boyfriends who visited all the time, I took my time in a frankly disgusting wood paneled shower that on several occasions feature centipedes emerging from the cracks. At the start of my PhD program in Atlanta, where I spent my first year living with an intrusive, toxic, angry woman who lied about who she was to get me to sign on as her roommate and only later showed her true colors. Yikes. I couldn’t escape from that place often enough. I finally got my own place out in Decatur, where rents were cheaper, and discovered a funky old apartment building with a small, high window ate the top of the white-tiled shower wall. This may have been where I started to spend more meditative time in my life-at-that-time. I had a lot of independence and could live as I wished.

I was lonely for my long-distance boyfriend, but I had many good friends at my university and a very supportive mentor. When the Georgia heat started up in the late spring, and continued well into the autumn, I looked forward to a morning shower. I couldn’t afford a/c, so I’d take a shower with that little window open and enjoy a cool breeze and the sound of the birds in the trees behind my building. I still revisited my former showers from time to time, but enough of my environment suited me that the shower no longer served the same purpose as it had in earlier days. I gradually gave up the meditation. In fact, in my current house, that I share with my husband and son, I don’t even have a shower-tub combo. I have a walk-in shower and a separate bath. I have been so content here that I didn’t even think about what was “missing” from my bathroom for several years. I still feel a certain peace when the warm water hits the top of my head, but I no longer have to pretend I’m somewhere else. I’ve been home for years.