Bathing beauty
April 4, 2008“Pretty” is such an insipid word. “Beautiful” – overworked, meaningless. And “cute” is faint, faint praise indeed for the fine joyous sight of my little love naked and perfect in the water.
Today, as often happens, I was attempting to take a bath and she was hovering over the water, giggling, dropping shampoo-bottle depth charges into Mommy’s excitingly large bathtub and making enormous splashy windmills. As also often happens, once I’d washed my hair I let her get in to play for a while. The tub is so big and we are so small that she can circle me, dipping and bobbing like a baby otter. She is astonishingly comfortable in the water, free and weightless and elemental, and all at once I remembered feeling that way, too, and so tomorrow we will join the pool down the street.
Because all good otters know that time on dry land, especially in the summer, is time wasted. Fortunately, my cub has just reminded me.
Oh, the tongue, the precious tongue. Don’t you love how her wet skin smells after being in a swimming pool? A fragrance never forgotten and a time too precious to be missed.