My house was built in 1938. The bathtub is original and there are rust stains around the drain fixture and it needs fresh calking. It’s vintage like the rest of my home. Twenty years ago, and in the early years of my marriage to Neil (who loved a bath) I soaked in a tub almost daily.
Living in Europe during the early 90s, Neil and I experienced all sizes and shapes of baths in the many rentals and hotel rooms we stayed in. One memorable hotel in Italy had a tiny square tub that puzzled us. It looked like a little shower pit with no curtain. Neil, ever the comic, folded his 6 foot 4 frame into the cubby bath and held the shower head to his ear as if he was making a call. It was a fun photo op (I’m still searching for said photo!) but not an acceptable tub.
The bathtub was one of the first things Neil assessed when we landed someplace new.The best was in our apartment in Zagreb – long enough for him to almost stretch out. Because he was one of 6 children in a working class family, Neil learned to share bath water. He was chivalrous: regularly ran a steamy bath for me, set out a towel and sometimes, even when we had electricity, lit candles. When I was limp-as-a-rag-relaxed, rather than empty and refill the tub, he’d climb in and use the same water. It would still be clean(ish) as a bath was as much about relaxing as it was scrubbing and I took care and appreciated the frugality of his practice. Besides, this conservative bathing was necessary during our courtship days in a war zone.
Neil and I met and fell in love while we were both based in Bosnia in 1992. He lived at the Holiday Inn in Sarajevo and I was in a small flat in Kiseljak – a village about an hour away through checkpoint filled roads. Access to water and electricity is often weaponized in war. Besides making life miserable for populations, there is a huge increased risk of disease. Many days we’d turn our taps on and nothing would come out – especially at my flat. Journalists and relief workers were housed at the Holiday Inn and Neil, who worked with the International Committee of the Red Cross. They were always more likely to have water and thanks to generators the news outlets relied on, electricity. Both of us had learned the trick of filling the bathtub and any other available containers whenever water was available.There were many days I’d bathe in an inch of cold water. In the early days of our courtship, when I’d stay with Neil at the Holiday Inn, he put his electric kettle to good use, topping off the usually tepid water. Those baths were particularly sweet for the preciousness of both water and warmth in the winter of 1992.
I don’t remember when I shifted away from taking baths to showers. I suspect it happened gradually as our life became more hectic. And certainly, like most things, we’d stopped sharing bath water. Water is precious. Love is precious. I feel this but my thoughts here are a muddle when I try to write more – about water, about war, about love. How does that sense of these things change when the world falls apart around you? I can tell you that everything changes in war. If you don’t know this, my hope is that you may never need to find out.
We take so much for granted. Those of us who have it, mostly presume our comfort. When I first moved to Zagreb – still near but not as affected daily by the war, I marveled at the abundance of water and electricity. But soon enough, I no longer thrilled with joy every time I flipped a switch and had light or turned a faucet to a flood of hot water. It became expected: of course I have these necessities. I can fill a bath, take a long hot shower, and watch television at night. I expect it. And I have it – a drinkable abundance of water, plenty to fill a bath. Because, by some chance of birth, I was not born a child in Gaza, Ukraine, South Sudan, Haiti, Afghanistan – so many places in the world who live without basics. I try to remember that I was once lucky to have the inch of water to bathe in.