When I was an active Mormon, I never took baths. Something about the stillness, the clear choice to do nothing, was a hard sell for me. I loved being productive[LB1] . I loved purpose through creating and working, and a bath left me unsure how to justify my time. Leaving behind some of the work obsession that Mormonism cultivated in me has allowed me to reconsider such restful, unjustifiable activities.
The other day, filled nearly to overflowing, I sat with my two daughters in a tub barely big enough to hold three people. The three of us have not often taken baths together, until recently. I could only see their heads above the blanket of bubbles that covered the warm water. Their faces, flushed with steam, still showed smudges of dinner and washable marker that had transferred to their cheeks from the palms of their hands. The ends of their wet hair danced on the surface. One of them turned to me, her small shoulders barely visible. She sent her toy alligator underneath the bubble clouds and back up again, seeing me without watching me. My other daughter laid her head on my chest and didn’t speak for a few minutes.
One of my favorite things about going to church was the hour in which my children had to stay close to me on the bench during Sacrament Meeting. There were times, especially when they were younger, when it was just counting down minutes, but there were also times when that quiet closeness made us an island unto ourselves. I knew I would miss that feeling. The way they had no place to go except my lap, or pulled in close to me, neither of us really listening to what was being said at the microphone, but more mapping out ourselves and our relationship to each other.
I worried that when I left, I was taking that from us. I worried that my new life would be void of the sort of structure that would require us to swim to the shores of ourselves.
I did not speak or hardly move as my daughter laid in the water with her wet head on my bare skin. Outside the bathroom door the dog barked as she played with my son. My husband typed on his computer. The lapping of water against porcelain as my youngest daughter pushed her toys through the water brought me back to that moment. I had journeyed somewhere beyond what I once thought was the only safe place, and we had landed here.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Letters to a Leaving Mormon by Ashmae Hoiland to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.