shower thoughts
I look down and the tub is barely draining; I wiggle my toes—when did they get so hairy?
I look down and the tub is barely draining; I wiggle my toes—when did they get so hairy?—and they send out scattered ripples in the pooled water. I wash my hair with shampoo from a bottle that says “Erin” on the label and think about canceling my next shipment, which feels overpriced and not to mention wasteful. But the shampoo is good and can I really bring myself to risk a new one? With these greasy bangs?
I wash my face with a BHA cleanser I hope will minimize my nose pores and think about how there’s been another school shooting and how this time (this time…of how many?) it’s a girl, only 15, and how when I was 15 I was mucking stalls and living with a stepdad who had a handgun he kept under a pile of sweaters in the closet.
The water comes up to the top of my feet and I start quietly singing my shower song, Now That The Light Is Fading. I lather my mesh wash cloth that I should’ve replaced years ago and my throat seizes on the low notes. Did I ever think about snatching my stepdad’s gun?
I scrub the dry skin of my shins and try to think more pleasant thoughts: how I am made up of the same stuff as stars and moons and waterfalls and dinosaurs and the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs and the baby growing in my sister’s belly and the children buried alive in Gaza and Bibi and Biden and
Glen turns on the kitchen faucet and the shower water turns boiling. I think jesus it’s going to burn me and reach for the knob and pause and think I wish it fucking would I wish I would burn like the tens of thousands of women who set themselves on fire to escape worse fates and I am not singing anymore I’m sobbing and then I remember that my suffering cannot save them my suffering is fucking useless so I turn the knob and the water cools.
Now the water in the tub is up to my ankles, which are bright red and splotchy, and I cry for everyone I cannot hold or feed or shelter, everyone whose feet I cannot wash in this tub that won’t drain.
I push in the knob with my hairy big toe and the water stops. I grab the clean towel from its hook and sink my face into it, asking.
How can I go on as I pull on a new pair of leopard-print pants. How can I go on as I drive to a friend’s resale shop where I work once a week, making small talk with regulars and steaming clothes. How can I go on and pay myself out with small bills so I have something to give to the people with wet cardboard signs that say “anything helps” and “need to feed my family.” How can I go on when I get home and bring the neighbor’s packages inside because she’s away for the week putting her dad in a home. How can I go on as I make dinner in the kitchen Glen and I cleaned together before bed last night, joking and teasing each other.
How can I go on? Just like this, I guess. Always like this: one small, useless step in front of the other. One at a time, even on shaky legs, even with tear-blurred vision, even with a song caught in my throat. It will never be enough, it will always feel inconsequential, and yet. Does each step not send a ripple out, like shower water hitting a slow-draining tub? I think it must.
I think it must.
CRIERS TO THE COMMENTS 👇🏻
do you believe in ripple effects of loving actions?
ICYMI
6 things that happened after 6 weeks writing this newsletter
I’ve been writing this newsletter for six weeks now, which is the lifespan of a young worker bee or female tsetse fly. So you could say I’ve been writing this newsletter for a lifetime.
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against mourning
Dear Emily, When I was only a handful of years old, our neighbors started calling me The Good Doctor because I liked to have people lay on the couch and tell me what hurt so that I could diagnose and boss them into feeling better. Keep it elevated. Take a nap. Drink soup. My suggestions were never sip this magic potion or sit still while I wave my wand over it. I was a child, not an imbecile.
***
but can he buy you $9 nachos
When my great grandmother got ill, my grandmother was 14 and her big brother was too busy with medical school to help, so she cared for that old German bat herself—feeding her after electric shock therapy, cleaning the kitchen and bathrooms, doing the laundry and ironing trousers and taking the abuse.
it MUST!
I think I was feeling this a lot at the start of the year. All we can do is make a difference in the small circles we inhabit-- to the people and places around us that we can influence.
P.S. This is my shower song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0udu4KYv1zI