The Bathroom War

I grew up in a house that had one bathroom for seven people. There were actually two bathrooms, but one went into retirement when I was about seven years old and from 1983-2003 it served solely as the laundry room. Informally, it was more like one big hamper. The shower rod was an extension of my parents’ insufficient closet and the tub was the landing strip for clean yet rogue items like socks who lost their partners and belts that were hastily ripped off a pair of pants en route to the washer. I think something went awry with the plumbing. Actually, I don’t really have a solid comprehension of why my family didn’t use this bathroom. This room, the Hamper Room, was conveniently located right off the kitchen. Inconveniently, it remained out of commission for guests who had to climb a flight of stairs to use the real bathroom.

The real bathroom upstairs was a busy room. Accoutrements adorned the wide windowsill as well as the sink and the bathtub. The Wella Balsam shampoo bottles were close to 64 oz (keep in mind this was long before Costco) and lasted about a week, the tubes of AIM toothpaste seemed alive as they oozed a neon blue gel that slithered down the white sink. The half-opened 12-packs of Cottonelle toilet paper were a permanent fixture. Rarely was a roll placed on the actual toilet paper holder, and if it was it lasted about two hours before it needed a replacement. So, without a family meeting, we seemed to agree by physical demonstration that the toilet paper holder was on sabbatical. Bars of Ivory Soap in the shower were rebellious, either slipping off the soap holder onto vulnerable toes or stubbornly sticking to the soap holder as prying fingers tried to wrestle them free. Ivory and I had some words back then (even if they were only in my imagination). To this day, I don’t buy Ivory Soap.

The Bathroom War happened sometime circa 1990.

Or maybe it was the Door War.

In either case, it happened.

We lost the bathroom door during an all-out fight. It was ready to go after years of being slammed and pushed and pulled. It had stood in the way as defender when victims fled sibling attackers from the hallway and pushed it shut with all their might. The door would teeter and inch to the left and then an inch to the right as one child’s face grimaced on the inside while the other child grunted and grimaced. Fights terminated at the door. It’s exhausting to push against someone with the same strength. Winners are not determined easily that way. [There is a warm-up we do in dance rehearsal. The first part is placing your hands palm-to-palm against someone else’s and bending your knees and pushing each other. When doing the exercise properly, you break a sweat without moving. There is perfect equilibrium. The second part of the exercise is placing your palms against the wall and doing the same thing. Literally, you try to push the wall backwards. It’s exhilarating. Truly. It’s also exhausting and reminds me of the Bathroom War every time I do the exercise.] The bathroom door had its last word during a battle between siblings. I think the match was uneven – 2 against 1 – and the door’s ancient hinges crumpled, with wood panels falling backwards over the little person behind it. It was a dramatic ending to a standard sister- sister- brother- sister- brother fight. And it was a dramatic beginning to the phase in our lives which is now known as the “No Bathroom Door” phase.

A cotton sheet replaced the bathroom door. It was tacked up above the door frame and when not in use, pulled over to one side and gracefully draped behind the towel rack conveniently located behind the door (or what was once the door). It was a clever idea, I thought. My dad was working 11pm-7am shifts in Mattapan and my mom was refereeing five children under the age of 13. The idea that we should get a new door just never floated into our family orbit. There is serious family debate over the length “No Bathroom Door” phase. I have polled six out of seven family members and I received the following answers:

1. “At least, at least, 3 years.”
2. “2 years”
3. “Oh my God, it was only a couple months.”
4. “Years. Obviously. Years. 6 years.”
5. “Well, I feel like it was 4 years. But, that’s just my memory and it was probably only 6 months.”
6. “Ten years. Don’t write about this in your blog.”

For those of you who know my family, you can have fun matching up the answers to the people. I will put an answer key at the bottom of this blog.

I mean, not often does a family of seven share one bathroom (granted my dad grew up sharing one bathroom with 12 people) but to also not have a door on that one bathroom is impressive. There was no need for knocking, you could just walk right up to the curtain and ask (or scream, or whatever other means you chose) “are you done yet?” A sheet does not block out smells. Or sounds. The bathroom was the opposite of private. It was public.

So, as I sat in my parents new house in New Hampshire (equipped with bathroom doors), on the toilet, in the downstairs bathroom this past Memorial Day Weekend, I was reminded of the Bathroom War. I was thinking that historically we have had a lot of communication in our bathrooms: fights (The Bathroom War), discussions (“How much longer are you going to be?”), demands (“Turn the water off!”), and requests (“can you hand me the ______?” as a hand reaches through the opening between the sheet and the doorframe and hovers above the sink waiting for the object to be placed in it). Going into a bathroom never exempted you from participating. And as I was reminiscing, I grabbed the little quotation book that my parents keep in the bathroom.

Each time I go to this bathroom, the bookmark (a square of toilet paper) has been moved and strategically placed between the pages of quotes that some family member thought was appropriate. It’s almost as if the wooden structure in the doorframe (now equipped with a lock!) really isolates us, so we’ve decided to try another means of communication. I cracked up when I read the quote that was bookmarked. I don’t remember what it was, but we are not that mysterious to each other and our choices of quotations are quite revealing. Quotes my mom chooses address “taking your mother for granted”, quotes Gretchen chooses resemble something like “you are what you eat”, quotes from Danny “reserve judgment”, Erin “art is expression of self”, Tommy “roll with the punches”, Kirsten “embrace the power of the mind”, and Freddy “appreciate the simple things.” That little square of toilet paper is being pushed and pulled, moved from one set of hands to the other, much like that infamous Bathroom Door that we collectively miss.

Answer Key:
1. Danny 2. Erin 3. Priscilla 4. Gretchen 5. Thomas 6. Freddy
Kirsten will be polled upon her return stateside.

Moose & Stephen King

I am laying on my stomach reading Stephen King’s latest book on the overgrown grass at Prospect Park. I am thinking how long grass is so much nicer than short grass with its sharp stubbly short blades. The sun feels good on my calves. It’s a Monday. Not a lot of people are at the park. I feel good. I feel lucky. I am at the place in Lisey’s Story where a novel’s plot begins to thicken. I am enmeshed in the sparks of suspense and in the outer aura of my present moment I am slightly distracted.

“Moose! Moose! MOOOOOSSSSE!” I hear a far away voice yelling but I am not registering partly because I know there are no moose in Brooklyn.

“MOOSE. COME. MOOSE.”

I am reading about the protagonist reaching into her mailbox to find a bloodied, dead cat. I am spooked. It is the middle of the day. Broad daylight. I look up from the book to comfort myself with the reality which is mine.

Comfort is far from mine.

There is a pit bull charging at me. He has struck what appears to look like a hunting-like gallop and he is coming right to me. I am partially submerged in long grass. I look like prey. His brown, muscular shoulders are supporting a broad head with a tongue splayed out of the side of his mouth. He is galloping and his owner, blurry in the background, is beginning to sprint in my direction.

I think: “Oh. This must be Moose.”

For some reason, I don’t freak. Usually when danger presents itself to me, I flee. But I think I know how dogs (in particular, how pit bulls) operate and decide that I should be submissive. No sudden movements. Things could be worse, I could be a character in Stephen King’s imagination.

Moose is right in my face now. I say gently, “Hello, Moose.”

That’s all.

I’m not risking my hand to pet him.

“MOOOOOOSSSSSE! He’s a puppy. He doesn’t bite.” His owner is attempting to reassure me of my survival as he gets closer to us. But I think of the dead animal in the mail box and visualize the pit bull’s jaw locking on my jugular as the owner stands there helplessly saying, “he’s never done this before!”

There is no leash. On the dog. Or in the owner’s hand.

The owner gets his hands on him and pulls him away, whacking him a few times and then finally tugging him back to the family’s blanket by his choke collar.

I sit there frozen. And as I watch them walk back towards their stomping ground, my heart races. Pounds. Climbs into my throat and I think: “I should go. If Chris, the voice of reason, were here, he would make us get up and move to a new place in the park.” I begin to put my sneakers on. I am tying my laces when my heart rate slows down and I think: “Nothing is going to happen. They will put a leash on him.”

I revert to bare feet and lay back down on my stomach.

I resume Lisey’s Story and the dead animal clean up.

“MOOOOOOSSSSSE! MOOSE. Come, Moose.” I look up and see Moose charging, this time with physical contact, a man who is sleeping with a straw hat laying over his face. I search the vicinity, looking for the ever-important eye contact that signifies comraderie: “can you believe this?” But the few people around me are reading, sleeping, sun-bathing.

For about twenty minutes, Moose charges at and hunts down a few more people. He genuinely pursues the man in the straw hat and I think about a picture I saw on a stranger’s blog recently of a pit bull mired with porcupine needles. The pit bull and porcupine got in a fight in someone’s backyard. The porcupine won. See exhibit A. But there is no porcupine here in Prospect Park and Moose is looking for a serious throw-down. I decide that I don’t want to be Moose’s choice for a throw-down, especially since I do not have the necessary needles.

I decide its time to retire from Prospect Park and read Stephen King at home, alone, under the covers. The way his books were intended to be read.

No more Moose for me.

Prep Time

In the midst of one of my insomniac moments last night, I found my restless mind wandering to Sarah Jessica Parker. I don’t know why. That’s what so magical about insomnia: the things that keep you up in the middle of the night. Three hours of a little tossing and turning, some sudoku on the toilet, a swig of water, some staring at the ceiling and some random thoughts. The first big event I remember attending when I was young was Annie at the Wang Center in Boston. Sarah Jessica Parker did play the role of Annie in the musical, but after some brief research today I now know that she was on Broadway at the time and she would have been too old in 1982 to play the Annie that I saw. I went to see Annie with my grandmother and I don’t remember anything about the actual show. All I recall is the prep: my mom buying me a frilly pastel dress at Filene’s, singing “Tomorrow” in the car, and being nervous about not having my parents with me at the impending performance. Prep Time is a big factor in my childhood memories. It’s one of my adult “issues.”

Prep Time takes on various forms. Christmas was the worst with its mayhem and adrenalin rushes combined with bottomless piles of crinkled wrapping paper and strands of glitter that stuck to everything. After morning gift opening, it was Prep Time. This meant clean-up, dress-up, and fix-up. While in the shower I would hear my mom calling, “Erin, I need you to help me with the potato salad.” Standing with water pouring down on my head, I would wonder why we had to make potato salad. The extended Gottwald family ended up ordering Chinese food on Christmas and I didn’t understand my mom’s compulsion with bringing unwanted potato salad to my grandmother’s house in Roslindale. Once I was downstairs standing next to her at the kitchen counter I would argue my point and she would tell me to “just do it” as she finished up cutting vegetables and ran into the shower. I remember the packets of dry Lipton onion soup mix and the containers of sour cream that made obscene sucking noises as the cream was released from the plastic. I would get goose bumps as I heard the onion mix crackle under the folds of sour cream. Prep Time during childhood also included some appearances by my mom in her bra and underwear, ironing blouses and pants on the ironing board (at lightning speed) in the middle of the kitchen. Passing dress inspection with my mom, to this day, is like passing the bar. At 30 years old, I still get the “is that what you’re wearing?” question posed to me as we are about to depart for family weddings.

Yesterday I was walking down Sixth Avenue in Park Slope and I watched as a group of children waited at the bus stop. Some of them were without parents and some of them had siblings and mom in tow. I watched them as the doors of the bus opened and they climbed aboard. Once they were safely aboard the bus, several moms turned to go on with their day, walking down the street at break neck speed. However, a select few remained on the sidewalk waving to their children on the bus with one hand and covering their mouth with the other. I had a flashback. My first day of kindergarten, I came home and fell down the stairs of the bus, right in front of my house. The fall was bloody. My red tights tore at the knees and my knees were scraped up. I don’t remember being a wimp as a kid, but watching my mom’s face react as her precious, dressed-up little girl tumbled into dirt and grime and ruined her outfit was enough to make me break down. All the prep time that morning, all the build-up to my first day of school, the pressure!

Watching those kids at the bus stop also reminded me of how saying bye was always such a big deal in my family. It’s directly related to Prep Time. Going back to school and going to camp were momentous occasions. My mom shopped for all the right things according to the official lists that families were given: the right supplies and attire. All the research, collecting, shopping, and spending built up my expectations for each event. By the first day or school and camp, I was a nervous wreck: Did we get the correct ballet shoes? Did I have the right Trapper Keeper? Were my shoes ok? My self-confidence level would plummet and I would doubt my ability survive without my mom’s assistance. Leaving her side left me with a sense of abandonment and nervousness. Leaving for Bates was similar. Actually, I left the details up to my mom since she enjoyed taking charge of them anyhow. Because I never took the time to look at the printed materials, we ended up going to Bates one day too early. I was left at a deserted campus and slept in a lonely dorm room my first night at college. I was about 20 years old when I finally came to grips with separation anxiety.

And coming to grips with that anxiety had a lot to do with abandoning Prep Time. I’m a relatively organized and responsible person and this manifests itself in a tendency to plan things, but not like my mom. I under dress for almost everything. I figure that informality feels more natural to me and when I feel natural I am more pleasant person and being pleasant makes me feel nice. I also don’t prepare much for things. The dance classes that I teach are almost always more enjoyable (for the kids and myself) if I do not have a plan: it allows freedom and flexibility and surprises. I under-pack for trips, always packing less than Chris. Sometimes I regret this once I am at my destination, but it is important for my self-esteem to be low maintenance. I have also trained myself to have low expectations so that disappointment is not as crippling as it was when I was a kid.

With all of this said, I am doing a lot of Prep Time these days. I have decided to take a cross-country road trip with my two sisters. Prep Time is necessary. Prep Time to align realistic expectations: there will be arguments, there will be drama. I have decided that I will bring a video camera so that when my flight instinct kicks in (see “50% and Then Some” blog entry) and there is no place to flee to, I will turn on the video camera and have a reality show. Last night I had a dream that we got trapped in Cleveland on our way to California. At a crack house on the railroad tracks in Cleveland. I think I may be anxious about the trip.