Thoughts next to the Bath Tub
My boy in his bath
While I sit next to his tub,
Writing. We each play.
The youngest one is taking a bath. He loves it, but it does require urging to get him inside the tub. And now he’s playing with all the toys that got dragged from across the house in the years his siblings have been using this same bath tub.
I am ever fearful of the kids drowning and so we never leave them alone. Well, almost never, there’s always too much to tend to in a five-person-household. Still, I’m never at ease with them in water without adequate adult supervision.
As my fingers test the temperature and my mouth talks my son through the routine of undressing, peeing, cleaning up and carefully placing glasses on the counter top, I get a flashback. One I often get. I see my eldest son, in the bath tub, plastic sharks and some Playmobil figures nearby, and his eyes on me. He’s begging me to play with him. He loves it when I do, and I am really good at it, too. But I never really want to. There’s no end to it. I let my figures die a hundred times over, and he revives them and reboots the game time and time again. I know I should cherish these moments, and at the same time, I anticipate the fight he has a tendency to put up when I announce the end of bath time.
That was then. When I was more consumed by being a good professional and prioritizing work over family, even though I don’t think I was that much of a career person. But the mental pressure I put on myself was very predictable to myself today, and very invisible to myself back then. So all those “I should be…”-lines came puncturing the time I had here with my boy.
Sometimes, I managed to tackle the thoughts, and engage in the moment, and that was great. My son loved it. And sometimes, I couldn’t, and made sure his dad would replace me.
Now, seven years later, I settle down next to my youngest and look at the cell phone in my hands. My youngest starts playing, and barely seems to need me. My cell phone holds nothing new for me, and I realize I feel repulsed by it. Acting on an unfinished, unclear, maybe even inexistent thought, I get up, put the cell phone next to my son’s glasses on the counter top and rush to my desk. From the stack of notebooks, I pick one that has the color that seems to reflect the mood I want right now – a sage green – and then I grab my fountain pen, and I dash back into the bathroom, and sit down.
A stack of Leuchtturm1917 Jott Notebooks in different colors - copper, berry, powder, aquamarine, sage, stone blue, Nordic blue - still shrinkwrapped, sitting in my office.
And I start to write.
Black ink to creamy paper.
I write down the story that I had told this little boy the night before, and I try not to embellish it too much, but to enrich it nonetheless.
And I feel good about sitting here.
When the thought comes that maybe, yes, I’m physically present, but not emotionally available to my son, I lift my head, ask him if he’s having a good time and smile at him. He nods and continues his play. And so do I.
Maybe I’m sitting next to him, but am far away. It’s possible. Maybe I think I shouldn’t be near and far at the same time.
I am learning to let that thought be.
Because I am more than just some thought.
