A mother’s vows
I bathed my 10-and-a-half-year-old daughter and washed her hair for the first time in at least six years. Thanks to her broken ring finger on her right hand, and a midnight blue fiberglass cast that can’t get wet, she needs help.
At first, it felt odd to me, cleansing this independent and maturing child of mine. The last time that I did this, her body was mushy with adorable baby fat, and the tub was filled with bath toys. There was room for the toys, after all. Now, not so much. When she lays down to rinse or relax, she must bend her knees to make room for her head at the other end. How strange it must be, I thought, for her, in her nakedness, that I’m doing this.
As for my daughter, her smile emoted contentment, and if she could purr, she would have. Her body, it seemed, remembered what it was like to have Mama bathe her, as I scarcely had to instruct her to make body parts available for the sudsy wash cloth. I told her stories of what I used to do during bath time when she was younger, and of how she responded. I even sang the song that I made up so that she (and later her sister) wouldn’t squirm away as I rubbed lotion from head to toe.
