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Coffee and A Bathtub
Parenting in a Pandemic
I fill the tub, making the water as hot as I can stand it. I slide in and my ice cold feet burn from the contrast. It hurts at first, but I continue. I submerge everything except pointy knees, chin, lips, nose, eyes, forehead, hair. I slide my hands into the hot water last. My right hand, so dry from the New Mexico wind that the skin is cracked, causes me to wince as the hot water attacks the broken places. If I’ve added Epsom salt, I feel that interaction even more acutely, despite the respite the salts bring to the rest of my body.
I submerge a hand towel in the water and place it across my stomach and chest, trapping the warmth in. This bath ritual has become an essential aspect to my life now that I live in New Mexico and no longer share a tub with my two boys. Before, I never felt the tub was clean enough to want to soak in. Now, it feels different. This is my bathroom, off limits to them, except for emergencies and only for the use of the toilet, never the tub — sacred as it has become for me.
The tile in the bathroom is funny, mostly grey with an open-sided triangle formed by red tiles on two sides of the tub, the sides opposite each other. A third odd set of red tiles adorns the wide wall where the window is, that window trimmed in black tile. Not ugly. Not abhorrent, just odd. It reminded the boys of a…
