Bathed Bliss

I woke up that first morning in a state of jubilant bliss. My feet felt warm and cushioned as they skit across the beige, plush carpet. I glided across the clean, slippery tile floor of the kitchen and continued my skid into the bathroom.
“A bathroom, what joy, what bliss”, I remember thinking. How I enjoyed flicking on the light and associated fan so many times that the room became my very own mini discothèque with the muffled background fan serving as a spin doctor. I caressed all the brass Moen faucet taps, one cold and one hot. Oh, to have a hot water tap. My fixated gaze caressed that hot water handle as though a long lost love had at last returned. My gaze shifted from the tap into my very own mirror. A mirror, clean and free of those speckled dots that cover mirrors that are ripe with age. I could see my whole undotted, unbroken reflection in one piece and not worry that I had developed chicken pox or a bad case of acne overnight. I could see that I looked haggard, a sight that had gone unnoticed for so many months having not had a clear mirror.
I turned my head away from the mirror and there it was, sitting perched so delicate and crisp under the spotlight of the warm bathroom track lighting. A white porcelain toilet with matching lid just sitting there sparking, waiting to be used. Ooohhhh, to have an indoor toilet of my very own. I knelt down and wrapped my little arms around the bulky body of that porcelain beauty. I laid my head ever so gently on the lid as a smile broke free on my face. I just sat there, hugging that porcelain god like a drunken college co-ed after a Thirsty Thursday night on the town. She was all mine!
When at last I tore myself from my toilet reverie I stood and stared my desire in the face, removed my pajamas and readied myself to enter euphoria. My ears recalled that familiar clacking sound of a shower curtain being drawn back on its rod. My feet felt the cold, grainy tub bottom. My hands reached out and turned the dial taps and I stood, in my best yoga sun salutation pose, head boldly turned to the sky, and waited for that interminable moment for the water to move through the pipes and pour spurtfully out of the massaging shower head and directly into my face. I felt the warm heat of hot water and the shivers of goose flesh it sent down my spine. I flicked my head left and right, my feet did a little shuffle skip, my arms wrapped themselves around my core and I laughed and laughed and laughed as the hot water warmed and soothed my tired body.
I used every single product in that shower. The shampoo, conditioner, shaving cream, razor blade, foot scrub, body loofa, even the coconut and mint shower gel. I used them all and my old friends embraced me and welcomed me back into the fold of civilization.
I had used a community bath house for the last four months. For four months I smelled the fetid, moldy smell of steam that never escapes. Used never quite clean showers that were always clogging from hair and other debris and whose walls always had a slimy, greasy feel to them. Used toilets whose stall doors never shut so that one was always being walked in on or observed by anyone passing the line of four toilet stalls. Used sinks whose water poured in milky white and whose surfaces, although clean, always reminded me of a hospital. I looked into mirrors pocked with water marks and old dust film. And moreover, in four months time, I never had a moment to myself in the bathroom. No one moment, not one second of private aloneness, for over 50 women shared that bathhouse and there was constant traffic in and out.
The bathhouse served its purpose and did its job well and I’m grateful for its presence as I know many other rangers go much longer with far fewer amenities. But for me, four months was enough. The morning of my return to my own place was bliss. I had my space, my time, my private clean aloneness restored. And although being home meant my park ranger season was over and the wild open spaces would have to wait another year for my return, I was glad to be back in a place where the hot tap ran hot, the cold ran cold, the toilet flushed and there was never a line for the shower.