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| All of human experience is seen felt behind bathroom doors, from loss and grief to new beginnings. |
Not just a room with a loo, but one with a view; a bird's eye view to the primal experiences that make us human as we visit many times each day.
Within those wipe-clean walls we spend hours pondering life's junctions and milestones, prepping for hot dates, rehearsing our job interviews.
We cry over ended loves, hormone-induced spots on the face or our self-perceived perfect imperfections.
It's a teenage sanctuary, a place to hide, pluck, prune, tear your hair out.
Or spew out and flush away your frustrations.
Then it's time to draw careful lines in the sand and move on.
The bathroom is a place to prepare for the day, wash the work shift from hell down the plughole or bathe in a warm afterglow.
A retreat, a treat, a hideaway, a rare place of privacy in the hustle of households and life.
It's a room where babies are made.
And where babies are lost.
And where anxious would-be parents check and re-check which of those paths awaits.
And then in the same grief space, now hope-filled, babies are birthed, beautifully.
And they are bathed by hands that love.
Small, individual differences are found in that place where we are as nature intended.
A freckle... a curl... an extra chromosome...
The bathroom becomes a place of joyous splashing and benchmarks growth across the sleep blurred years. It becomes a classroom where little wins of independence are clapped by eager audiences.
Later, we rush through theses familiar spaces of a school morning, grabbing a hairbrush and an odd sock, shouting reminders of 'teeth' as we hurry. Hurry, hurry up and go. And go one day they will.
But bathrooms can be a place of quiet, shameful dread. Doors shut and cornered, gritted-jawed hoarse whispered threats, swear of absolute destruction. Those tile clad walls alone holding dark, fearful promises of the ends of days.
And those days do end.
And new bathrooms are found, and those you share them with changes. And they are so much more than a fresh lick of paint. And they become the calm, safe sanctuaries that they always promised to be.
And you are once again swaddled in towelling hugs.
* This piece was first featured on my sister blog Downs Side Up
