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So life has been hectic for the last few months and as I always do when that happens, I’ve been neglecting my own personal writing projects again. I have plenty of ideas rattling around in my head and some of them even see the light of day when I find time to scribble them down in one of the Moleskine notebooks that I keep with me at all times…but most of them stay confined to the deep recesses of my imagination, only allowed to come forward and show themselves on the rare occasions when I have the time and space to daydream. My current favorite venue for this activity is the bath tub. There are several reasons why this is the ideal spot for creative thinking. First of all, as any mother knows, once you have a child there really is no such thing as privacy anymore. Your children will follow you around the house without any regard for what activity you might be engaging in – if they “need” you, they don’t care what you’re doing. But now that my son is a teenager, he’s a little creeped out at the thought of seeing me naked so if I say that I’m going to be taking a bath before heading in to the bathroom, I can be assured that he won’t come in and bother me unless the house is on fire. Also, I’ve always been the kind of person who finds a hot bath extremely relaxing. I run the water as hot as I can stand it, add some epsom and sea salts to soothe my achy joints along with some lavender and bubble bath, light some candles, turn on some music, and soak until I get prune hands…pure bliss! Soaking in a deep, warm tub feels very safe and nurturing to me…so much so that I spent so long laboring in the bath tub at home that my son was almost born on the ferry to Seattle. I was scheduled to deliver at a hospital in Seattle that had only a couple birthing suites with hot tubs so the midwife had advised me that if it was important to me to use a hot tub during my labor, I should call ahead when I realized I was going to be coming in to request one of the suites. But when I called, I was told no suites were available…so I decided to stay at home in my own comfy tub as long as possible, which ended up causing a little bit of a panic in a deserted ferry restroom on the way to the hospital later that evening but since everything turned out just fine, I still love hot baths. I feel like I can think more clearly while soaking in the bath: outlines for screenplays, novels, short stories and more all fill my head, different ideas competing for attention in what is a suddenly crowded field. On a day to day basis, I feel like I get bogged down with the mundane: what medication to take and when, going to seemingly endless medical appointments, taking my son to school and his appointments, household errands, finding time for work, etc. It takes so much time and energy just to make it through the day (and sometimes I don’t make it through – sometimes I’m so exhausted by late afternoon or early evening that I collapse on my bed, absolutely spent) that there is usually simply nothing left over for creative pursuits. May is Lupus Awareness Month and someone from the LFA asked me to contribute something to a project that they were working on where lupus patients and family members were sharing stories about how lupus impacted their lives. I haven’t finished my contribution yet (of course!) but the main point of my piece was that lupus is an incredibly frustrating illness, not only because of the debilitating pain and fatigue and the unpredictable nature of the flares, but also because sometimes you can’t help but grieve for the life that you lost before you got sick or that you might have had if it had never happened. A systemic autoimmune disorder like this changes every aspect of your life and while I don’t want to live my life in bitterness and regret, I think it is important to recognize and acknowledge these feelings…I can’t deal with them and move on if I don’t. So anyway…in the warm embrace of a hot bath, I can ease away not only my physical aches and pains but my mental burdens as well. For an hour or so, I can let my mind wander not in the boring and constraining world of reality but in the expansive and exhilarating world of creative potential. Until I can move there permanently, at least I have a temporary refuge.
