Bathtub Therapy

I could write a sonnet to the bathtub.

My first apartment that I lived alone in had the mother of all bathtubs.  It was a claw foot number that I could stretch my 5’2” frame completely out in.  I think that’s when it started, my taking a bath every day. 

I always say that baths are my therapy.  Some days I come home from work and I can’t do anything else until I’ve soaked in the tub.  I won’t have eaten all day, but I can’t get to that until I just sit in the tub for a little while and let the warm water take all the aches out of my tired muscles.

I’ve become a connoisseur of bathtubs.  My tub at the condo was pretty great, an iron tub that held the heat really well, but the back was too steep so it wasn’t as comfortable as some to sit in.  The rental that I’ve been living in had a great tub actually, nice and big and old and iron, but it had been cheaply refinished too many times and the paint was chipping off the bottom so I had to always have a little talk with myself to not get grossed out about germs.  I’m staying at my Mom’s house right now, and her tub is ergonomically awesome.  Perfect angle at the back for delightful repose.  My only complaint would be that it’s not cast iron, so whatever it’s made of doesn’t hold in the heat for as long as I would like it to.

When I came home from work late last night, I just had to get in the tub.  I had a People Magazine, my tub reading material of choice, and got in her tub, and with the bubble bath and Epsom salts relaxed for a long time.  Aches and pains from standing all day and Sunday's tumble down the stairs: relieved.  Heartache from painfully hearing about being called Sawan’s “ex-wife,” rather than “widow”: just let it go in the warm water.  Stress over mortgages and closing dates: let all that wash away.  Leave it here.  It’s the best therapy I know.