Taking a bath on Saturday afternoon brings to mind my grandmother Maude. Gone more than 20 years now, memories of her can still make me laugh. And sometimes shed a tear.
Each Saturday, Maude announced to whoever was in the house that she was taking over the bathroom for her weekly bath “whether I need it or not, so get your business done and get out.” Seven people in one old house with just one small bathroom—that’s how it was in those days. I was just glad that by the time I turned three and cared about such things, the family had moved from the farm into town, had indoor plumbing, and baths no longer took place in the big metal pan tub, set up in the middle of the kitchen floor, boiling hot water dumped from the stove kettle to mix with the cold water carried in from the outdoor pump.
Like Maude, I loved baths, from the moment I first slid into that claw-foot porcelain job at the new house. I could sit and play in there til I turned blue and pruney. My mother, through trial and error, discovered that the only way to coax me out of the tub was to convince me I would go down the drain with the bath water once the plug was pulled. Then she’d hover over the tub, fingers poised to yank the rubber stopper, while I screamed and scrambled to make a quick exit. Hey, I was only three. She had no such power over her own mother though, and Maude used every minute of her reserved bathing hour.
At the 30-minute mark, Maude would holler for me or my little sister to come scrub her back. She made no attempt to cover her large, saggy body. Instead she’d say, “Bet you wished you looked this good naked.” For a woman whose mother was a minister, Maude was downright irreverent. I’ve heard it said that bonds often develop between members of every other generation, and for us, it was true. My mother took to her prudish grandmother’s ways; I gravitated to my own grandmother’s risqué humor. It was Maude who taught us the preferred body washing method: “First you wash down as far as possible, next you wash up as far as possible, then you wash possible.”
Maude had moved in with us when I was eight, leaving her second husband to tend the farm by himself, or maybe with the help of the woman he was fooling around with. Maude never talked about it, but as a quiet, observant kid, I learned things. Like the fact that she’d divorced my grandfather, her first husband, because of his drunken rages, and made her way through the 1920s as a single mother with two young daughters. Later she’d married Rube, the farmer. I never liked him. He was an ornery, foul-mouthed man, something Maude couldn’t cure him of. On that count, she settled for a bit of vengeful mischief and taught her parakeet to repeat: “Rube’s a sonofabitch. Rube’s a sonofabitch.” Maude always found a way to make life fun, no matter what. And she’d seen some pretty hard times.
She wanted her back scrubbed with a bristly back scrubber and Ivory soap, then massaged with a hot washcloth. I think I would have been embarrassed to perform this task on my mother, but with Maude it all felt natural. Once I tried to count the freckles on her back. Now I realize most were age spots, mixed with scars from decades of hard work as a farm wife, and maybe a few from my grandfather’s beatings. Still, she was a big woman who stood straight and laughed loud.
She sang as she soaked, loud enough for the neighbors to hear. Everything from hymns to bawdy saloon diddies. My parents thought she was downright shameful at times, but we kids loved her. During years of my own family’s chaos that adults couldn’t keep hidden from sensitive youngsters, Maude provided a safety net of funny stories, knitting lessons, home cooking and silliness. As my sister says, “Maude was a gift.”
Last Saturday afternoon I sat in my Greek soaking tub, floating a bar of Ivory soap like a kid playing with a toy boat, and tried to remember the words to one of the bawdier songs she used to sing. What came to mind, instead, was an old Sunday school song, one she’d learned from her mother. “I washed my hands this morning, so very clean and white…” I don’t remember all the words to that one either. But I will never forget the vision of Maude sitting in the tub, her broad back clean and white, the scent of Ivory soap, and the warmth of the tiny, steam-filled bathroom.
Part of me is not exactly happy that I have turned out to look “as good” as she did naked. On the other hand, she set a welcome example of a woman who could love life and herself with all their imperfections. I sat in my tub and considered my own saggy body, and all the years gone by. Perhaps the only thing I regret about not having children is the lost opportunity to be the Maude in an unsuspecting grandchild’s life.
Left To Write 