SHOWERS

“She hates taking showers. But loves drying off!” The black lab confirms this love in unabashed doggie joy. Her person wrapping her in a towel, then giving her big rubs. The lab wriggles in exuberant doggie rollovers on the warm sidewalk. “Don’t stop!” she’s saying, loud and clear in her doggie body language.

            I’d seen them up ahead as I marched up 31^st street, my morning routine for the pandemic pacings. “Someone’s having a good time!” I’d hollered. And then the shower hatred. The drying off love. And I think of how my mom used to give the German Shepard baths with Suave Green Apple shampoo, taking the big dog in the shower with her. And then, once the shower was over, how proud the Shepard was of her clean and sweet-smelling self.

Or when I used to try to give the giant white cat, Pablo, baths. Well, I didn’t give them to him. I took him to the vet. They tried for a while. He wasn’t white for long. But turned an unattractive grey hue.       He was too violent though. The vet tech finally banned him from the salon. “Attacks without warning” was stamped in red ink across his files.

            He stayed that dirty grey for the rest of his life. But didn’t seem to mind.

            I, on the other hand, mind immensely taking showers lately, during this pandemic. I didn’t use to be this way, but now, taking a shower means that I’m not going swimming. My routine was that I’d wait and swim at around noon and then take a shower after the pool.

            But no more. There are no pools for me to swim in easily. Sure, I can make a ‘reservation’ at the El Cerrito Pool, but these are so hard to get that after one time of a crappy lane, though a heavenly swim, I haven’t been able to get another reservation at all.

            Plus, no showers there. I just had to swim, then climb out into the constant cold wind that whips through El Cerrito, wrap my towel around me and shiver home for the shower.

            Plus, the drought. I worry so much about all the water I use taking a shower. Sure, I turn it on and off when I soap up, but still…. it’s a LOT of water. And there was NO rain here last year. Something, during the current health crisis, that people seem to have forgotten about. Every evening, on my walk up 31^st street, I see this pajama-clad man hosing down his stupid lawn. No drought there! He stands with the hose, watering watering watering and I do consider going over and reminding him that California is in a severe drought, but I don’t. I don’t like confrontation, esp. with strangers who are my neighbors. I do try to have a good relationship with neighbors in this pandemic.

            So, when I see the neighbor with her happy dog, and yes, what must have been a bit of water to wash the canine—she is large!—I don’t even think of telling her not to wash her dog. That there’s a drought on. That dogs must be dirty.

            No, all I can think of is the joy that both she and the dog embody. There’s nothing like doggie joy, is there?

            Unless it’s the joy of showers. And I don’t mean the ones in the house, I mean the ones that I hope bless us this winter, watering all the thirsty plants and brown lawns and dirty white cats.