Bath During a Late April Blizzard
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| Christina Olson's Childhood: Bed |
Bath During a Late April Blizzard
To float, upheld,
as salt water
would hold you
once you dared.
Denise Levertov
To Live in the Mercy of God
I didn’t look out through and maybe
I should have, to prepare as for a long drive. Haven’t we
come to believe that now
that it’s April the snow falling won’t make much
of a fuss and we can ride it out, even be
inside it on the road and it won’t be long
and the apple trees will be
blooming and specs of little wing dust
will grow into fruit and we’ll eat it, still
tingling, in the fall? But aren’t you tired,
like me
of thinking
too far
ahead? Why can’t it
be just
today? Still
we’ve come to understand
each other and maybe
you’ll agree that memories at our age are really all about
muscle and what touches
the skin after its been
dormant in a bath and relaxed
and the water’s cooling off and my father’s the one
who’s bathing us and pouring
pan after pan (the same one he cooks
yellow beans in)
over our heads to rinse the soap
away, and to lift me and then you out
of the tub and dry us
quick but not too rough. I liked the water
but knew enough not to want to
step back in. It was all scum
on the top anyway, it looked like the raw
vegetable water, though mostly peas after they’d been
put on to boil and boil and some froth
is churned up like there’s hands
in the water with a washcloth and a bar of soap
and all that vigor of rubbing
to bring up the suds and bubbles—
to stand and take it ankle deep in the tea-kettle hot sloughed
with faucet water cool. To stand and take it
up and down the legs and arms, the corner of the cloth slapping
like a dog’s tongue and spraying up suds,
and then made
to sit in the skin of it all coming to the top
of the water. I have never felt cleaner. The bar
of soap always made its way straight
to the bottom and we left it there
until the tub was drained
until it was dry enough of slime to pick up
and put back over the sink
and we’d been dressed and maybe made bed ready,
skin pink and chaffed
but only in places he rubbed and rubbed
to get the dirt off
and some, stubborn, well, you know the rest
right? You remember the rest, right?
It’s not just me
driving. We take turns remembering, swapping
the wheel, or at least we always have
in this new turn
in our family,
if the weather’s right
and there’s a lull in the storm.
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