Time for a Bath

I haven't taken a bath in years. No, it's not a lack of hygiene; it's that I'm a shower man. To me, a bath seems like a luxury, a waste of time and water. "Drawing" the bath, carefully lowering myself in, feeling around for the soap or sponge like a scavenging fish after some smaller sea creature, then washing myself in slow motion, as one tends to do underwater--it all seems very leisurely and Victorian. Then, too, I don't know how to wash my hair in the bathtub. But my main problem is that it feels . . . delightful. It's like a trip back to the womb, and I'm tempted to linger and savor it--not good if I have to be somewhere in an hour.

Baths are for kids, I think, rightly or wrongly. My 12-year-old son insists on taking a bath before he goes to bed every night--no nagging required. I think he is the cleanest 12-year-old in town, but the appeal for him isn't about getting clean. The warm water seems to relax him, to calm his whirligig of thoughts. When he was a bit younger, I would sit on the floor by the bathtub while he was in there and we would talk about things: Harry Potter, space aliens, why his classmates insisted that anyone using Chapstick is applying lipstick. You know--the burning issues of our day. After a few minutes of soaking and unwinding these conversational threads, he'd be ready to sleep as soon as his head hit the pillow (well, most of the time). These days, he wants his privacy while he soaks, but its still an effective sleep aid.

My wife likes a leisurely bath, too. For her, it’s “therapeutic,” especially when accompanied by mountains of bubbles, various bath oils and salts and, occasionally, aromatherapy candles. I could not take such a bath with a straight face, but I admire those who can.

I do like to sit in a hot tub, whenever I stay in a hotel or motel that has one—which is perhaps once every couple of years, while on vacation. But such a soak is a special occasion. It doesn’t elicit any feelings of Puritan guilt, unless I stay in longer than, say, 20 minutes. But by then I’m ready to get out anyway, since I’m starting to feel like a boiled lobster.

Maybe I’ll take a bath sometime soon, just to reconnect with my fetal self and relax a little. As soon as I have an hour in the morning or evening to spare, I'll do it. And when will that be, he asks himself . . . .