THE NARRATIVE ARC
Coming Clean
Confessions of a bath lover with delusional tendencies
For many years, I considered baths the inconvenient cousins of the far superior shower.
Baths were slow. I was in a hurry. Baths were for babies. I was an adult. Baths were old fashioned and fussy. I was modern and, I liked to think, low maintenance.
Hah!
That was before bathing bliss.
My bath nirvana occurred, appropriately enough, near the city of Bath, England.
We were visiting an old friend who lived in a converted Victorian train station. The whole place looked extraordinary but the bathroom was an experience.
The tub, an enormous creamy porcelain boat beautifully crackled with age, had a sloped back that invited one to slide shoulder deep into velvety warm water. I accepted.
But what made soaking absolutely divine was that the bath faced a glowing wall of ancient stained glass depicting haloed saints and angels.
Each approximately six-feet tall window had been rescued from a church scheduled for demolition and was framed to form two partitions. They weren’t only leaded glass but also incorporated etching to give the illusion of dimension to faces and feathered wings, and a sumptuousness to the folds of their robes.
