Sensory Trickery: The Bath

At 6:30, I’m up before the rest of the family this Sunday morning.  Rather than check the television for overnight pandemic numbers, I grabbed my computer, headed to the basement, and wrapped up on the couch in a queen-size soft blanket.  Once completely cocooned inside, I navigated my hands out such that, other than my face, they are the only pieces of skin connecting to the cool basement air.  Cool because I forgot to close a window overnight, so the 40-degree chill is working hard against the furnace trying to maintain a 70-degree air temperature.  When we put the addition on the house in 2012, we added radiant heat, so as I walk across the carpeted floor my feet absorb the warmth while my bare arms feel the light breeze from the open window.

This experience is exactly what I have been considering writing about over the last couple of weeks.  It was on my mind at the top of the basement stairs as I talked myself into writing this morning.  While I’ve navigated these strange days, the most effective route away from thinking about the pandemic has been sensory immersion.  Of at least two senses.  Or, in the case of this morning, one sense experiencing different contrasts at the same time.

A better example than the air chill differential is my use of the big white bowl.  The one in the bathroom that more often than not is a giant dust collector.  We had this free-standing bath tub installed in 2012.  It’s beautiful; I’ve looked at it often since its installation, as I zip in and out of the shower and out the door.  However, in the last six weeks, I’ve filled it more often than usual.

A couple weeks ago, I worked my way through the cupboard under the sink and located all the bath gels and bubble bath soaps that have been lingering in that dark cave.  All those special bottles saved for special soaks at special times.  The most tantalizing of these finds is a collection of twelve small sample bottles of Molton Brown bath gels that Bill’s sister gave me for Christmas one year.  As the water begins to fill the tub, I read the British labels before I twist off the lid to sample the fragrance.  Geranium Nefertum. Delicious Rhubarb and Rose.  Vetiver and Grapefruit.  Orange and Bergamot.  Fiery Pink Pepper.  Jasmine and Sun Rose.  Reading the words is as glorious as sampling the scents.

When running the bath, I let bath gel drizzle from the bottle into the stream of hot water running from the faucet.  This gives the bubbles a head start.  Then, I leave the room and close the door while the tub fills with water and the air blooms with jasmine and sun rose.  The couple of minutes it takes for that bath to steep, I sort a shelf or two in the closet, pretending to go about my day-to-day business.  In a strange way this exit from the bathroom and then re-entry tricks my mind:  When I open the door, a humid wall of fragrance encompasses me.  I inhale deeply thinking how lovely it was for that person to run a bath that filled the air with jasmine and sun roses.  My body breathes this moment in: hearing the water running, seeing the bubbles piled high, and smelling the sweet air.  I could leave the bathroom without dipping my toe into the water and be extremely satisfied with the triple wallop of this bath.

Immersed in the water, my brain explains that the smell must still be there, but my nose grips that moment of intense transition through the doorway.  And as the scented air gently permeates the nasal cavity, the scent all but disappears.  It becomes neutral without the comparison of the air behind that closed door.

The temperature of the water depends on the ache factor in my body.  If my hips are barking, I run a pretty hot bath—thinking that there needs to be some practical value in filling the tub.  In my mind, a cup of coffee is the perfect tub drink; however, I know that the heat of the water I’m sitting in would be better offset with an ice cold glass of water. 

But what to do once in the tub?  The options?  Read.  Listen to music.  iPhone.  Nothing.  The books I’m reading are paperbacks too big for a long soak.  Listening to music means getting a portable speaker set up in the bathroom.  An iPhone in my hand will lead me back to the outside world, and doing nothing will lead me down that same path.  I have been opting for a small book of mini-crossword puzzles. Clues in the puzzle book whistle and hiss engaging my brain in a rather staccato fashion.  Minutes mush together and an hour passes in the suspended reality of hot water on the body, cold water going into the body, a glimpse of swirling bubbles, the popping of bubbles, lingering jasmine and sun rose in the air—and the brain’s babble of busyness contemplating a 5-letter word for “Perfect.”

For an escape from this time, one just might need more than a single sensory experience, for the brain can cleverly swerve around this.  But it’s pace is slowed with the full-on sensory smack of an orchestrated bath.  That is ideal.

Random Thoughts Anchored in Timelessness

Approximately a half hour after eating lunch, Bill chews a piece of gum.  I know this because we watch a mid-day news report every day after lunch, and midway through I hear a rumple of tiny paper to my right.

In an effort to place an order for groceries and grab a delivery time, I repeatedly hit this trio of buttons, “Checkout,” “Continue,” then “Cancel,” as if I’m trying to win concert tickets from a radio station.  

I put laundry detergent into the washer for an extra-large warm load of whites and let the water run a bit to get the soap mixed in.  An hour later, I found one pair of underwear spun and stuck to the wall of the basin.  Distractions still exist in this timelessness.

I woke up at 3:30 Saturday morning, grabbed my phone, and on the first try, nabbed the last grocery delivery slot two weeks out. 

At 9:40 I woke up the second time that morning and thought I had just enough time to put clothes on and fix my hair for a church Zoom meeting at 10:00  that would be followed by an 11:00 Zoom meeting with friends.  I told Bill my plans; he said, “You’re going to church on Saturday?”

I looked at the calendar to confirm the date in my own head.  That grid on paper was useless, for I didn’t know the day of the week nor the number associated with it—or if I had crossed out the day before such that “today” was the number to the right of the that one with a slash through it.

I find few absolute deadlines.  I see how I rely on those in normal times.  How comforting they are.  How people let them slide now; after all, we have an abundance of timeless time.

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I have two games stacked on the TV stand/side table next to the couch in the basement, Risk and Jeopardy.  I’ve never played either of them, but stacked on top of one another, they are the perfect height to get my head and shoulders into the Zoom screen.  I also need the red-handled, flat head screwdriver on the other side table: with the handle end wedged behind my iPad, it pushes the screen to the right angle such that Zoom buddies are not staring up my nostrils.

At dinner, I tell my family that I do not want to go grocery shopping for a couple weeks—but that we have plenty of food.  Only that you might not have your favorite what-cha-ma-call-it every day.  I online-shopped Goldfish crackers and eggs with wild abandon.  Those dozens will be bartering items for toilet paper in four weeks’ time.

I found “Aerial America” on the Smithsonian Channel.  I’ve flown over Iowa and Wisconsin in the last 48 hours.  With ten loads of laundry to sort laid out on my bed yesterday afternoon, I discovered that the first Muslim mosque in the United States was built in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and that the earthy smells emanating from that city are from Quaker Oats and General Mills.  I can smell the Cheerios baking now.

I know that every piece of clean laundry will fit in my closet but only if I have one season’s clothes out at a time.  Warm jeans and long-sleeved shirts are now packed away.

Vitamin D is becoming more available naturally.  Despite the temperature, a half hour facing this higher sun, even with a coat on and a blanket wrapped around me, feels delicious. 

Zoom meeting screens can slip behind the open website screen.  I heard a man’s voice utter a couple words when I was alone in the kitchen last Sunday around 5:30 p.m.  I ignored it as one does the occasional random voice in one’s head.  Near 6 p.m., a woman’s voice said, “Linda, are you here?”  I had tested getting into this host person’s Zoom meeting a half hour early.  However, after successfully logging in, rather than closing Zoom, I had somehow just hidden the open meeting behind my website screen, and the host, this woman’s husband, had also come in about a half hour early. 

I now know to “Leave Meeting” and to close the Zoom application if I have no intentions of surprise visitors in my kitchen. Or in my head.