Keeping the Baby, Tossing out the Bathwater, Hanging onto a Few of the Bubbles

I lay on my back in the not deep enough tub, bellybutton filling with a smaller bath, bare knees, bare breasts, bare belly poking out of the shallow water. In boredom, pretending, and failing, to languish in a Marie Antoinette tub recalled another time, and another place. A tub in Paris that was so deep that the water came up to my little button nose when seated fully upright.

Left footed toes turning the hot water on, warming the water like a toddler pissing in the baby pool. I got bored and drained the tub, remaining in repose until the water was gone, watching the whirlpool in the drain the way my Ahmaw had shown me as a child.

Left to my own devices, I've never had any idea what to do with myself. Left in my own head, I can be downright ridiculous. Thoughts as self-indulgent as Cleopatra's perfumed baths find their way into my brain, but who can blame a girl for wanting all things sensuous and beautiful and pretty?

Is it so wrong to imagine a utopia populated by various versions of myself, arm in arm with a charming beau, waltzing down tree lined avenues, eating dinners on rooftop balconies, and sipping champagne, engaged in effortless conversation? Is it so wrong to imagine a scenario in which my suitor is not touched in the head, in the slightest? Methinks not.

Perhaps we should forgive ourselves our little slips, our little dreams, our little fantasies, and not be so hard on ourselves for otherwise misguided wishful thinking.