Hi Friends.
I don’t know yet if I’m a bath person. But this week I took two, the first the morning after our new drain was installed, in the window between my family leaving for the day and the construction workers showing up to continue work on our other bathroom (currently in the new pipes and concrete stage). I dumped in bath salts, overfilled the tub, and watched the light shift across the new tiles. Listened to music, unaware that in the next room, the dog was stealing a roll of film from the shelves near my desk, mad that I’d shut the door, perhaps. The second bath was a double down, the same salts, and a glug of Dr. Teal’s, which I’ve now learned makes very ample—perhaps too ample?—bubbles. I grabbed my book (Tana French’s The Secret Place) but I did not read it. I was too wet, too deep in bubbles, but this was, I realized, fine. Good. I remembered suddenly how in my adolescence I’d sink into a tub, dip my head under the water every now and again to get that great big echo in my ears, admire my knees. I had no salts, no bubbles, no portable speaker. When I came out, my heart would be pulsing in my whole body, a bit lightheaded from the heat of it.
Maybe what I’m doing is uncovering my inner child bath person, who I’d completely forgotten about. I did find myself playing with bubbles (glug Dr. Teal’s and you’ll see it’s impossible not to)—and thought of the moment with the bouncy ball in Swan Huntley’s perfect essay on succumbing to the Artist’s Way, which I did myself with similar skepticism and eventual gratitude in early pandemic days. Thought of, as no one bothered me, how Jesmyn Ward once said she wrote in the bathroom at times, out of necessity, how much sense it makes. If you’re brave enough to leave your phone in another room, you can’t do much in the bathroom, or so people suspect. She is not likely the only mother-writer to have figured this out (and getting ready to edit this newsletter this afternoon, I opened Abby Rasminsky’s most recent, which is synchronous in both its love of a bathroom door and the Artist’s Way, which is, by the by, very into synchronicity).
I didn’t have my phone and I didn’t want to get out of the tub, where I was truly doing nothing at all for the first time in a while and yet I did want to come out and take notes for this small missive on baths and doors and being too wet to do a damn thing. I remembered, too, how I used to stash my VC Andrews novels in my grandmother’s bathroom during family gatherings, a particularly funny (rude?) move considering my grandmother’s apartment was a studio, and had of course a single bathroom. I wondered where I could stash a notebook next time, though too, imagined that would jinx things some. I thought of how my sister-in-law Jodi, woman who always knows just the right thing for the job, told me once that someone makes notepads you can write on in the shower1. In the tub, I decided I needed one, and maybe a bath ledge thing, and some Epsom salts and maybe nothing at all except more Dr. Teal’s. I don’t know yet. 2
Our old tub was not only fairly gross by the end of its life—original to the prewar building we live in—but it had been associated with a chore, bathing kids, and had been tainted by that, the way boxed mac and cheese and salami and swings can be when the childhood is one you are on the outside of and no longer living through with the pleasure of discovery. The glug of bubbles had delighted my 11 year old when she had her experience with them this inaugural bath week. Maybe the bath’s charms will wear on me like parks department sprinklers and pirates booty did. I haven’t decided yet. I do know that last year I gave the characters in my novel a grand old tub in their house, one that would not fit in our apartment, but that I thought they should have, though I didn’t know why, exactly. I’m working on figuring that out, too.
Where to Find Me:
Going round 2 on this one-day class on finding your best writing practice at Catapult. For all levels. There are slides, and jokes on those slides, and also lots of practical advice and encouragement and a fair share of suck-it-up-buttercup moments, but kindly delivered, I’ve been told. It’s a lecture class, so you don’t have to do a thing but uh, soak it all in.
Lighting this candle every time I get to work on my novel, from the best store. Choosing this candle out of all the amazing smelling ones in there was near impossible. Everything in there is chosen with care and the witches were kind and helpful and they’re having a 2.22.22 sale today, for what it’s worth3. The wick is wood, which means it sounds like the only white noise track I can endure, which is a roaring fireplace. It’s the best.
Reading very slowly. Maybe it was finally getting to Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing, which I recommend if you like meditative reads that also gently open your neural pathways.
Talk soon,
Danielle
Well, ha, finding this link I have discovered that I have one of these, from a subscription box from the now-defunct CW Pencil Enterprise, may it Rest In Peace.
Tell me, bath people, what you require, what pleases you, in a bathtub. Your replies will fill my inbox with bathing recs.
Fwiw, all the links here are love links, not affiliate ones.