Seven Around the Sink

I believe in sharing a bathroom with more than one other person. I am the oldest of seven kids. This is hard work and I share a lot. But sharing the bathroom is different than sharing a bite of my sandwich or half of my closet. The bathroom strips away any pretensions. There’s no where to hid in the bathroom, no where to stash my secrets. It’s like, millions of miles outside anyone’s reasonable comfort zone.

My whole bathroom situation wasn’t always this dramatic. Years ago half of siblings were in diapers and I wasn’t a teenager. That means a lot when you are sharing a bathroom. There’s footage of family fun in the bathroom when we lived in a small apartment in San Diego. I’m crouched in the sink singing while my dad genially reminds my brother to floss and my mom passes by laughing. Good times.

Then I moved to Virginia, into a house with two bathrooms. The kids got the one off the hallway. The bathroom used to have green tile and rotting wooden cupboards but it has since been remodeled. Minor details. The real fun was yet to come. I hit puberty. The cupboards began to overflow with deodorant, make-up, rubber bands for braces and nail polish. But Adam needs room for HIS brace stuff, and oh no…now Josh has deodorant. Hmm…somehow the cupboard has grown smaller over the years.

Sometimes during the day I have to wait in line to use the bathroom. I can deal with that, it just reminds me of being some busy place in the real world like a concert or an amusement park. But the bathroom is crepuscular—dawn or dusk and…WOW! It’s like the hottest place in town. At night, seven people crowd around the little oval of a sink reaching around each other to grab the toothpaste, toothbrushes, and mouth wash. And then the baby climbs up on the toilet and so everything has to be stashed in the cabinet and quick! Then when I wash my face the blue sparkly toothpaste that is stuck on the sink gets on my washcloth and then into my eye. But it prepares me for college, right? Oh, and the world for that matter.

Patience is developed in the morning when I feel like I’m stuck in a play where everyone is messing up their entrance cues. At the unearthly hour of 5:30 I’ll knock on the bathroom door, which is locked and then creep back into my room. A few minutes later I’ll emerge just in time to see the door close again. Back to waiting and the cycle continues.

Now, I may sound like I’ve been complaining. But I’m not complaining. Infact as I write this I’m almost laughing. I love it! I really do. Hard maybe, but my appreciation for the seemingly mundane, my perspective on life, and my patience for others has truly grown. So share a bathroom, it’s good for the soul. This I believe.