Morning
When I was little, I remember my mom giving me a bath in the morning before school. It was always so early that it was still dark out. She only ever turned on a few lamps in the morning, hating the harsh glare of brighter lights so early. The hot bath would always wake me up slowly and I enjoyed scrubbing my tiny elbows and knees and feet. She would wash behind my ears and wash my hair for me since I always got shampoo in my eyes at that age. After she rinsed me clean, she would hold out a huge soft towel for me and wrap me up in it in her arms. She dried my hair with another towel, rubbing at my wavy hair. I’d always laugh as she dried me roughly pretending to be a drying machine and using a robot voice to talk.
I’d wait for her to give me the look and when she nodded, I’d run from my bathroom to my parents’ room and jump into her bed. I rolled around in her sheets, and curled up under the covers in my towel. I loved being in bed after taking a bath, it felt so wonderful against those sheets, and let me tell you, my mother had nice sheets. She would come in after a few minutes with a cup of coffee for herself and modified soy cafe con leche for me. Climbing into bed next to me, we would turn on the tv and watch the news together. We sipped our mother-daughter coffee beverages and she would explain to me the things going on in the world that I didn’t understand: natural disasters, murders, rapes. She was always very honest about these things and to this day I thank her for it. She lied about the important stuff like Santa. I believed in Santa until I was 12 because my mom was so good at keeping up the ruse year after year. She lied in order to keep magic alive and make things beautiful for me but she never let me become detached from reality.
Soon we would get up and she would dress me in my Catholic school jumper and we’d make our way out of the house for the day. I loved our drives to school in the morning but nothing could compare to the early mornings in the soft haze of pink lamplight. Waking up early with her felt like our secret, it felt like we were calling back to a different time when the time before the sun rose was sacred for people. Every morning, I roll around in my sheets now by myself and I wish my mom was about to walk in with coffee for the both of us. I hate the lines adulthood draws between child and parent; baths are lonely without robot voices.
