I don't take baths anymore. Gross, right?


I haven't taken a bath since May 23, 2001, when I was 11 years old. To put that in perspective, the movie Pearl Harbor came out two days later. That has nothing to do with it, it just demonstrates that it was a rough time for everyone.


My mom was diagnosed with breast cancer around the time I turned 10. Maybe a little before. My little brother Charlie was even younger - he was just figuring out that it wasn't OK to talk about his penis in public. (He was 6 or 7, which is early, considering I know people my age who still do this.) Anyway, she got radiation, took the drugs, she even shaved her hair so the chemo couldn't take that from her too. But she was really sick, Stage 4. They gave her six months to live when I was nine or ten.


So, when I was younger, I used to take really long baths. REALLY long. On average, an hour and a half, every night. I wasn't even technically bathing, I was sitting in a lukewarm pool of water and day-dirt. Sometimes I would just read. I occasionally find decade-old Archie Comics with water damage in my basement, evidence that I would turn pages with wet hands. My mom used to bathe me, but soon she was too tired, too sick, too at-the-doctor to do so, so I started taking baths by myself.


On May 23, 2001, I was talking to my mom downstairs. She seemed fine. She'd lasted two years, much longer than the six months the doctors had given her. I went upstairs to take my bath, and I sat there and took my goddamn time. That bath was about 2 hours, if I remember correctly. When I was well-pruned and "clean," I got out. After pajaming myself, I went downstairs to find my brother and my babysitter, but my parents were gone. Apparently, my mom had started shaking, went pale, and said, "I need to go to the hospital."


A week before, my mom had cut her leg on a chair in our kitchen. The chemotherapy had destroyed her immune system, so the infection that resulted spread quickly. She had gone to the hospital without saying good-bye to me, because I was in the bath for-freaking-ever and hadn't gotten out in time. The next day, my dad came home, gathered us on his bed, and told us that our mother was going to die. It was the only time I'd ever seen my father cry. The next day, she did die, at about seven-thirty PM. People were just going out to see an after-dinner show of Pearl Harbor at the same time that a kitchen chair's murder plot was deemed a success, against a woman who meant more than anything in the world to me.


After that, I realized that I wasn't able to say good-bye to my own mother because of the time I lost sitting in the bath. So, since May 23, 2001, I haven't taken a bath. I've taken showers, of course. Otherwise that'd be weird.