Tub Time

Here are some tub photos. Lila enjoys her tub time. She has an assortment of regular friends who bathe with her - underwater man, Mrs. Potato Head, Green Froggy #1, and Green Froggy #2 - and she is happy to sit for as long as you want, and even lets you do a little scrubbing, as her schedule permits.

Bath time is best when administered by Daddy, who has silly made up songs at his disposal, and can rhyme just about anything. When I get stuck at work and miss bed time, I like to picture the two of them happily splashing away in their usual routine.

I've remembered for a long time now a sequence from the Spalding Grey book "Swimming to Cambodia" (& the movie, of course) when he talks about being on location for "The Killing Fields" in Thailand. Spalding goes swimming one day, and though he is terribly afraid of sharks, finds himself swimming out further and further, to where he can barely see the beach, and then he experiences this "perfect moment" where all his fear leaves him, and he feels totally content, totally present, totally happy. What the monolog really touches on is how elusive that moment was, and how unexpected. And how feeling it made him hungry to feel it again. I read that book the first time when I was 16, I think, and I have often thought of myself as endlessly chasing such a moment down.

And here it is, most nights, at tub time. I didn't have to swim miles off the coast, or overcome my fears, or travel a great distance. The sound of those two enjoying their splish-splashing, talking to little plastic toys, singing silly songs...it's my perfect moment. It's utterly ordinary, and completely satisfying.

So sorry for the posting lapse. Work took up most of my week.