My standards of cleanliness for my daughter are inherently blasé; a combo platter of fatigue topped with nonchalance and a quick garnish of laziness. You pissed all down your legs? Nothing a few wet wipes can’t handle! Ample basil for our winter pasta sauces growing in the dirt under your fingernails? Perfect – let’s get cooking! Once when she was about 18 months old I went to scrub behind her ears and found a small cartel of evil lodged there. Because it was the FIRST TIME I remembered to even clean that zone.
This all started because, ugh, bath time.
It wasn’t always this way. She and I hung out in a steamy bathroom every night that first year. Like two old friends with our backs to the wall of a woody sauna, one leg propped up while lazily smoking Gauloises and debating literature (minus the smoking and talking). One time I even wore a beret and cranked some scratchy Piaf while regaling her with fine Grade 11 high school French tales of “Comme ci, Comme ca” et “Sur la table!”
Like all the unique parenting moments of the first year, bath time soon turned into another chore that suuuucked, so eventually the daily dunk turned into twice-a-week romps with Grandma doing one of them. Now that she’s three, she entertains herself by splashing around and drinking half the tub (my gag reflex loved that last part), so I am mostly in there just to prevent her from going full Ariel. Rocking to keep my ass from falling asleep on the hard toilet seat and swiping through my phone to catch up on all the cool shit other people did that day, I only really snap to attention when half the tub is in my socks.
Anyway, one of the ancient squirt toys she plays with had developed some kind of black crust on the insides that had eventually forced its way out. When she spotted a tiny fleck of black in the tub we went to LEVEL 8 SHIT CRISIS in a fucking hurry. I grabbed her arm before she vaulted out of the tub to hide under the fridge and explained it was just tub dirt! Relax. Mommy will get it out.
Except it wasn’t tub dirt.
I didn’t know it yet, but it was my personal Moby Dick.
For about 5 minutes (count those out slowly in your head – that’s still a lot of time), I tried and failed at scooping this tiny little fucker out of that bathtub. During that time, I went through the many stages of grief – disbelief that again and again I had NOT snagged it; anger as it slid under a toy or cluster of bubbles; manic hysteria when I almost had it pinned down like a piece of egg shell and she bumped me with her elbow, cocked on her hip, then said “You don’t have to be rude about it, Mommy.” I barely choked back a whisper-scream of “FUCK YOU AND EVERYTHING YOU STAND FOR.”
I chased this piece of rot around that tub like a madman, bent in half, lower back screaming, one full sweatered arm drenched, talking to it slowly like a serial killer seducing his prey and all the while holding in all the real words I wanted to belch out.
I stopped at one point and leaned against the wall, exhaled up into my bangs, and said with a laugh that I recognized as 87% crazy, “IIII uh, I don’t think Mommy is going to be able to get it.” Eyes darting, fever brewing, heartbeat pounding, I started to imagine myself in a softly sunny meadow. Long grass. A horse whinny in the distance. Chilled wine in my hand. And a machine gun in the other, aimed at the tub. The whine that ripped fresh from her mouth jolted me back.
My last ditch effort was to attempt a big scoop out with a large Tupperware vessel.
It worked. In one grand plunge of success I fished that fucker out of the tub along with half the bathwater, and threw my other fist to the sky in heavy metal triumph.
Those bath toys got tossed out. My arm dried. She settled in front of her iPad in sweet smelling jammies and damp hair, quickly forgetting all about the battle she’d witnessed.
The moments that test you in life don’t announce themselves in boldface. They are as quiet and sneaky as a bath tub shit, and I am proud to say that last week I emerged victorious. Wet and wild and proud – I WON.