Before you go #11: Stay Clean!

 Dear Sam,

I gave up coffee for Lent.  I start with that random bit of information because it led to my remembering a significantly poignant memory that I want to share and help you learn from.  I have suffered pretty severely at times over the last week, struggling through fatigue and brain fog and headaches.  All of these I expected, but my most bizarre, and surprising, symptom by far was severe muscle aches.  The entire back side of my body, from my shoulder blades through my calves, have been almost unbearably achy.  It felt like the sensation you get when you are in the middle of lifting heavy weights except almost unrelieved for days at a time.  It was awful.  Dr. Google said it was due to the hormone adenosine (or something like that—caffeine either inhibits or promotes the release, and when you go off it a body can respond dramatically).  I’ve never heard of muscle aches as a symptom of caffeine withdrawal, but I certainly had something going on.  (It’s also possible that I triggered the reaction through a combination of fasting and over-exercise, but I haven’t had a workout that would qualify as “overdoing it” for a lot of years, so I doubt that was it).

Regardless, I was desperate to relieve it. I tried some pain-relieving lotions, had your dad massage my back and hips, took over the counter pain relievers, and, two nights ago, decided to try a hot bath.  As I lined up my supplies (Epsom salts, lavender essential oil, towels, book), your youngest sister approached and offered to pamper me a bit.  She’s a bit of a connoisseur of fancy bath products, so she gently applied a face mask, drew me a bath and plunked a birthday cake scented bath bomb into the steaming water.  As I approached the water in my bathrobe, she made a hasty, embarrassed exit—the sight of her naked mom not something she had any interest in witnessing. I lowered myself slowly into the water, sighing deeply.  My eyes fell on the faucet, still protected by a rubber sleeve designed to protect little heads from being bonked at bath time.  It caught me up short. 

When is the last time I’ve bathed anyone but myself?  How long has it been since the sight of my uncovered flesh was anything but a source of embarrassment and discomfort for my children?  With your youngest brother just a month away from his 11^th birthday, and your oldest sister in college, it has surely been years.  Then, of course, my mind moved to you, my great big boy ready to leave in just a few short months.  It has surely been almost a decade since you let me anywhere near you at bath time. 

I can’t say I ever loved bath time.  I was always so tired by that point in the day.  I’m sure I rarely indulged you in the sort of aggressive bubbles we could achieve using the jets and a little bubble bath in the huge master bathroom tub I found myself immersed in the other night. 

And then I remembered a time, so many years ago that we hadn’t even yet purchased our house.  You were six months old, your big sister just 2 and we were living with my parents during our transition from our first city back to Dubuque.  They had a huge bathtub—large enough for at least two adults, and certainly more than big enough for a young mom and her two little children.  I don’t think we did it often, but at least once you, Grace, and I all took a bath together. 

How beloved were your little bodies to me back then.  You had the most creamy, flawless skin of any of our babies—smooth and luscious.  We were all so connected—you, your sister, and I.  Indeed, in those months, you barely even understood that you and I were separate people.  It was such innocent, sensual pleasure to climb into the warm water with the two of you.  How easy it was to clean your plump little bodies from inside the bathtub, instead of leaning awkwardly over you and trying to stay dry.  How delightful it was to linger there with the two of you—laughing and splashing and scrubbing.

For some reason, I remember imagining briefly that I was some kind of Egyptian queen, bathing luxuriantly in a warm room with a bevy of servants waiting just outside and my little prince and princess by my side.  I guess I had time for whimsical little imaginings back then when it was just the two of you and we were briefly free of the weight of home ownership while living with your beloved grandparents.  I don’t recall often imagining such silly things, but that night I did, while you and your sister giggled and blew bubbles and I savored the warm water, surrounded, literally engulfed by the wet, wiggly little bodies of two of the people I loved best in the world. 

It's probably weird for you, now, to hear me imagining a bath we shared all those years ago.  Certainly, our body connectedness drifts further and further apart as the years go by.  You’re a full-grown man, now, but then you were just a chubby baby boy who found his best comfort when in skin to skin contact with me.  As I rested comfortably Sunday night (the bath did noticeably relieve my back pain), my mind drifted back over those early years with you. 

You’ll take thousands of showers in the years to come, and I’ll have no part in them, save maybe providing some shampoo and other products.  Of course, any unexpected sight of naked flesh between us is startling and disturbing for both of us these days.  I’ll have to trust, forevermore, that you remember to clean all those once beloved nooks and crannies of your now long and lean body.  Stay clean, Sammy boy.  And maybe let yourself linger in a warm bath, sometimes.  It will be years, God willing, before you must find ways to relieve aches and pains (as much as I miss that sweet baby body of yours, I may miss the lither version of my own from 18 years ago even more!)  But, before you go, stay clean!