Tub be continued
Friday May 30th 2014, 10:53 pm
Filed under: Family,Life

Got a message from a friend. There is a teenage member of her family who is giving her mother a very hard time, the father has left the picture, and there was a reaching out for support.

I asked re favorite colors….

And as I sat knitting tonight, trying to get that silk shawl out of the way because there’s a few more people now that I need to get to work for after this, I remembered. I would likely not have remembered that my sister said it but I will never forget that my daughter did.

My mom always said that my oldest sister was an easy teenager to raise. I mentioned that to Marian once and she said that when she got too mad at the world or at Mom she would retreat into the bathroom and soak in a long, hot, luxurious bath.  Time alone. (As the fourth kid of six, I could add, hogging the bathroom, making the rest of us go to the one downstairs, silently ruling the roost. Except that I don’t remember it at all so clearly I wasn’t too traumatized.)

I can just picture the whimsy of the occasional splash, observing the droplets as they fell, adding more hot as the water gradually cooled, keeping it going. She would always come out feeling all was well with the world now.

My girls were teens when she told me that and I just, y’know, happened to mention it to them.

You never know if your kids are listening, but there was this one day that my daughter emerged from the bathroom (good thing we’d added on a spare one by then), hair soaked, fingers wrinkled, and exclaimed, “Your sister is a GENIUS!”


3 Comments so far
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This sure made me smile – and I wish your sister had spoken to my oldest as she went into her teens!

Comment by twinsetellen 05.31.14 @ 9:38 pm

You are from a family of wise women!!

Comment by Channon 06.01.14 @ 4:14 am

I’m a little behind because I’m operating without my computer. Since this is me, I’ll add a note. I rationally knew sometimes that I was being emotionally out of sorts, that I was internally reacting out of proportion, so yes, I found that a hot bath melted that away and let me think if I needed to. Then I could address an issue, if needed, calmly–but most often I didn’t need to anymore. I think the key was that a part of me stayed aware of proportion. I wasn’t a volatile teen, it’s true, but this helped.

And if you were careful that Dad wasn’t in range, you could take a chance and duck into the master bedroom to use their bathroom(and get roared at if he came for it and found it occupied).

Comment by Marian 06.02.14 @ 10:36 pm



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