Writing and Batheing

Good morning!

No "e" in Batheing, say you? You are right.  But why do we say it, bathe-ing then?The British say, bath-ing. Makes more sense. But I bathe. Bathe. Many will say to me, "You old fashioned thing. Why don't you shower like everybody else?"

I love my bath. It has to be hot, and there has to be enough hot water in the tank to replenish water and temperature as I linger there in a torpor. Wonderful ideas come to me in the tub. Whole poems. Good things.  I 'm not the only one, either. Bertie Wooster's nutty old uncle did all his thinking in the tub.

Showers are often cold, to me. Clammy tile walls or moist shower curtains don't appeal to me.  And my solar plexus does not get that stimulus that provokes those wonderful ideas mentioned above. 

The best shower I ever took was at Padre Island when I went down there with my sons, aged four and two, to visit my parents. They had a place down at the Island at the time, and one night when the infants slumbered in a baking temperature (no AC there, yet)  with my mother on duty, I went down to the surf in the moonlight and had a wonderful little swim.  When I came back to the beach house, I went to a shower underneath the house, stripped off my suit in the dark, and washed all  that sand off my body.  It was wonderful--the dark, the warmth, the water that was right out of the shower head just as warm as the temperature and my skin. I could scarcely feel it as water, or tell where it differed from the night around me. Next day, it was just too hot for us to stay down there, so we went back to Brownsville where my parents' house was air-conditioned.

When I grew up in Brownsville, nobody's house was air-conditioned.  If we  wanted relief from the heat, we went to the movies and basked in coolness for a couple of hours.  Houses were built, as they always had been built in that climate, to take advantage of the prevailing stiff breeze from the southeast that has always been Brownsville's blessing under a very hot sun.  A little shade, and that breeze, and life was quite liveable. But even with an air-conditioned house, the shower inside was all right in summer time for me.  Pleasant, even. You didn't even have to worry about the water temperature. It would be warm.  I don't remember any good ideas from it, though.

I guess you have to be immersed in a pool of water for the imagination to open up. Try it. You will like it. My bath is ready now and I am ready to start the morning. Wonder what I will think about in the bath today?  YAZZYBEL