“Hot Bath & Wishing Big”

By Sherre Vernon

Hot Bath

I leave my husband and toddler cuddled on the bed watching some high-pitched, bright-colored show that squeaks and flashes a spectacular cover and walk as quietly as I can into the bathroom. On an exhale, I light a candle, circle the tub faucet to the hottest temperature I can stand, and open a can of sparkling water. Inside this small alcove, inside this body that is just mine, I pull the shower curtain closed and sink into the scalding water. I congratulate myself again on getting a curved curtain rod, for that little extra space it provides. Eucalyptus and menthol steam the room.

I’ve have had my eyes closed for perhaps two nanoseconds when my Almost-Three slides the bathroom door open and appears between the shower curtain and the tub. Sometimes she comes to blow the candle out from too far away. Tonight, she’s there in supplication, her little fists folded together in a gesture I’ve never seen on anyone else, but that makes me think of desperate prayer; her head tilted to the side like a lonely puppy; a bounce in her heel-toe-heel-toe wiggle: Mama, please, I has hot bath? I love hot bath. Hot bath my favorite! Please.

Once she starts, she doesn’t stop. She’s Alexa on loop. She’s me, repeating, repeating. I tell her it’s very hot, make a sizzle gesture with my fingertips in the water. I let her feel it with her own little hands. I remind her that no, in fact, she does not love hot baths.

Please, mama! Please! I need it! I need hot bath!

So I yield. Candles, eucalyptus steam, cold bubbles to drink and a toddler.

She strips down with an efficiency that betrays her eagerness and reaches for me to lift her in. I start with her humpty-dumpty on the edge of the tub. She says, ah, feels good, when her toes hover above the water. After a few minutes, I move her over to sit on the turtle-shell of my belly.

Mama, so hot. I need cold bath, Mama. Cold bath better. All pleases and gesticulations.

The steel tub has already cooled the water significantly, and she’s dangling her feet over the edge of me into the luxury hot springs of my alone time. She sings me the song of cold bath until she’s comfortable standing in the tub, until she’s splashing and laughing. I’m proud of my stubbornness. At her next asking for cold bath, mama I tell her she can get out any time she pleases.

Mama! Out first! I swim a little.

What? I clarify for her this is my no-longer-hot-bath and that she is a guest. She doesn’t think I understand. She sighs like someone who’s had to explain herself too many times to an unhearing audience. She adds pantomime to her instructions. Towel. Dry, dry, dry. Dry leg. Dry body. Dry hair. She moves the shower curtain to show me the towel.  This child, all patience and generosity. She doesn’t mind helping me when I’m confused.

We go back and forth a bit about who should get out first and I unfold my body, willing it to take up as much of the tub as I possibly can and relegating her instructional demonstration to a corner by the faucet.  Though this feels a bit like victory, it’s a cold bath victory, and one that I no longer mind giving over to her.  I yield. I’ll get out first. She can swim a little.

I don’t even have the towel completely wrapped around my body before I hear I out, too, mama! I out, too!

Wishing Big

She wants big teeth now! and using half her body for emphasis, attempts to pull out the teeny teeth she spent the last three years growing. She reaches next for mine, perhaps thinking of exchange. She wants big arms, too. And big legs, and big toes. She caresses the parts of her body she is wishing larger as she names them. This isn't the first or only time she's asked me for these things in her almost-three voice, with her soft, square hands, miniatures of mine. And always, too, there's this asking me permission. She needs me to consent to her transformation. And I do. Despite all the pull against it, I do. I do not tell her what it has been for me to have a big forehead or big belly or what she's wishing for when she asks for big boobs, too, giant ones! I tell her only that yes, when she's grown, she will have all these things, as though they are mine to gift. She squeals her delight at me, at the abundance she can barely wait for, at my generosity for all my big body gave her: thank you, mommy, thank you!

Sherre Vernon is an educator, a seeker of a mystical grammar, and a 2019 recipient of the Parent-Writer Fellowship at MVICW. She has two award-winning chapbooks: Green Ink Wings (prose) and The Name is Perilous (poetry). Readers describe Sherre’s work as heartbreaking, richly layered, lyrical and intelligent. To read more of her work visit www.sherrevernon.com/publications