The only early memory I have of anything unusual related to bathing is when my mother would turn on the water in the kitchen and we would hear a scream from my father in the shower upstairs. Other than that, the plumbing in our suburban American 1960s house worked just fine.

My brother and I thought it was exotic that my dad took showers because as kids, of course, we were always bathed by mommy in the tub. Like the way he ate raw scallions at dinner, it seemed so knowledgeable, so masculine.

I switched to showers as soon as possible. Wash your hair while standing, it rinses itself. No more bending over the sink. A revelation. At one point I switched back to baths, deciding to read during the boring part, when the water is the right temperature and you’ve already washed. But I leaned forward to turn off the faucet and my hand which was holding the book went instinctively down, into the water. Well, this is stupid, I thought; back to showers.

Never was I able to re-create the romantic image of the woman in a claw-foot tub with a long back brush, lots of bubbles, hair carelessly pulled up in a pony tail. Helen Hunt in As Good As It Gets. Once, in my living-on-my-own-in-the-big-city days, I did manage to relax in my tub with cut-out psychedelic rubber flowers on the bottom, but turned around to find a huge bug sharing the experience with me. Back to showers.

Traveling around Ireland, in every B and B at best we had one of those sorry-excuse-for-a-shower contraptions on the wall. That was quaint for about a week.

Then I moved there to live with Tony. No more B andBs with pretend showers to keep Americans happy. Because we had no car and always rode buses, I lost weight drinking beer and eating chips with everything. But when I sat in the narrow tub each cheek touched white enamel. Both the tub and sink had the ubiquitous separate faucets for hot and cold. WHY???!!! Even when they build them new, that’s the way they build them.

Tired of trying to out-guess the immersion heater, I took to ‘bird baths’ most mornings. Just wash the smelly bits. I saved baths for hair-washing nights. Tony would come rinse my hair with a pot of water from the kitchen and we would chat.

When we moved back to the States, the first time Tony’s 14-year-old son went to take a bath in an American bathroom, he asked, “How do I turn on the hot water?” “The faucet that says ‘Hot,’” I told him. You just turn it on. No immersion heater. Turn the handle and out comes hot water. It’s not brain surgery! It’s plumbing!

Now here we are back in the British Isles, in the United Kingdom. It’s the 21st century. Our modern up-to-date landlord has spent countless pounds re-doing this ‘maisonette’ (2BR, LR, kitchen) with wall-to-wall carpeting, a washer/dryer combination, sliding glass doors in the living room, and central heating (sort of).

For my first shower, I was patient. Knowing what to expect from the contraption on the wall, I decided not to play the bitchy American asserting our superiority in plumbing. First, I figured out how to turn it on. Aha! The water was really hot. I got in. Driblets converged from the little holes in the showerhead and created a mini-stream down my back. I adjusted, I squirmed, I finally screeched to my Irish husband who had emerged from the same shower hours before pronouncing it just fine. No, sorry. Not my imagination. There’s something wrong with the damn thing.

The plumber said he’d come; he hasn’t come. We continue with baths, Wednesday night and sometime Saturday or Sunday. A lot of planning is involved, but I’ve mastered the art and the science. I play the separate faucets like a virtuoso. I get in when there is only an inch-and-a-half of perfectly temperatured water in the tub. I fill a plastic bowl with clear perfectly temperatured water and set it aside. I use the washrag to introduce the hot water to my legs, arms and face.

Then duck. Down. Beneath the surface. Just my head. Get the hair wet, wet, wet. Then shampoo. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. But as soon as you rinse you are sitting in a tub of dirty water, filled with your own soap and…soap.

Then conditioner. Let it soak in while I wash the rest of me. Keep adding more water to the tub in the right temperature mix. Swirl it clockwise. This is the boring part. What to do. Enjoy? Relax? No reading material? No radio? No conversation? Get me out of here!

Duck and rinse again. Then clear water from the bowl. Then fill it again with the separate faucets. Then rinse again.

The complete ritual includes the category of 'interim underwear.' You can’t possibly have a wash and then put on the same clothes you had on before. But after bathing and changing at night, I would have to put on new badroobies after wash up in the morning. Thus, interim underwear, the uncomfortable ones I really would throw away if I had enough good ones. They do for one night, then I change in the morning.

I would kill to be in the bathroom in my suburban American home in the 1960s and be scalded in the shower when my mother uses the sink.

So what is America’s greatest contribution to western civilization? The semi-conductor? The MBA? Jazz? Plumbing!

Kathleen Donnelly

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