Soak

So tonight I got out of work a little earlier than usual (11:00 instead of the standard 12:30) and I came home and promptly ran myself a hot bubblebath. I opened up a new book, The Time Traveler's Wife, and started to read and before I knew it the clock said 1:52 AM and I was on page 110. The bathwater was significantly cooler and my toes were wrinkled beyond all recognition. Man did I need a good soak.

I was looking in the mirror in the bathroom after I let the water drain from the tub and my cheeks were so rosy. My mom always comments on that, about how my cheeks would always redden up after having a bath as a little girl. I've got pictures, which my modesty will not allow me to publish here, of myself in the tub at various ages during my youth and it's true, the rosiest of cheeks indeed. It's odd how I can remember things from being a kid, but I will never be able to know myself as a 7 year old. All I have are splotchy memories pieced together from the depths of my brain and stories told to me by others -- and photos of course.

In the book that I am reading a woman named Clare is married to a man named Henry who happens to be a time traveler. He has no control over his travels and just sort of ends up places. They meet for the first time twice -- once when she is six and he shows up as a 36 year old man in her backyard, and once when she is 20 and he is 28 and in his present working as a librarian. So far my favorite thing about the story is that he gets to know her, to see her, as a child. To see her as a curious six year old practicing her penmanship, as a determined 12 year old learning to play chess, as a 16 year old learning about men. It's something I've wondered about every person I love now that I never knew as a kid -- What were you like? Certain details you could get from mere observation that might otherwise escape you for your entire life with a person. Or things that are so a part of who you are that they were there, in your character, when you were seven, just as much as they are now, when you are 28. Things like my rosy cheeks. And my love of baths. And books.