Taking a shower might not seem like much of an accomplishment, but in this case it seems great to me.  After you’ve read my story, it might make an impression on you, too.  I’m not saying it will make a good impression, just that it might have some impact.

The story starts with dirty laundry — not a metaphor for shameful secrets, simply a big pile of soiled clothing and linens.  I had been ill for several years.  A few times I was able to make a trip to the laundromat with a few loads, and a few times Greyfox took a few loads to the laundromat for me.  The washer and dryer that were in this trailer when we moved in here are no more than unhandy non-standard storage areas in the absence of running water.  The heating unit in the dryer didn’t heat anyhow, and I unplugged it to prevent accidental tumbling when I started using the drum to store collectable china.

Greyfox hates doing laundry – hates it vocally, volubly, emphatically and with loud profanity.  He prefers dumpster diving, so over those years when I was unable to wash my own old clothes, he would bring me other people’s old clothes that he had dug out of dumpsters or bought from the tables and bins of stained and damaged things sold for a dime or a quarter each at local thrift stores.  He told me a story once about the owner of one of the thrift stores pointing out to him that the sweat pants he was buying for me had some big holes in them.  He answered her, “That’s okay, my wife is pretty beat up, herself.”

Combine that steady intake of new old clothes with my parental programming not to waste things, and you get an ever-growing pile of dirty clothes.  I threw away a few things, but they were mostly Doug’s clothes.  He wears his things much longer between changes than I do, and I have come to learn what will wash out and what will not.  Occasionally, I would, with sad resignation, toss out one of his stiff odoriferous garments, or one of mine that didn’t seem to be worth repairing and/or washing.  Usually, I just tossed them all on the pile… the pile that was growing in the bathtub-shower enclosure.

When we first moved in here, I showered frequently in that tub.  There was never running water.  This trailer was manufactured with all the usual plumbing, and the landowner had a well and pump installed, but a previous set of house sitters had abandoned the place during a winter power outage and fled to the light and warmth of town.  Things froze and burst here:  pipes, the toilet tank, the water heater….  The owner had pitched them out into the yard and had not replaced them by the time we moved in.  The costs, in money and sweat, it would take to get them all fixed is beyond my capacity, especially since the well would need to be drilled a few hundred feet deeper to get down to clean water, uncontaminated by groundwater.

When I showered back there, I used a plastic Sun Shower bag, designed for camping.  In summer I could hang it out in the sun to heat with solar energy, but for most of the year I heated water in a teakettle.  I’d climb onto the rim of the tub to hang the bag on a hook I fabricated from a wire coat hanger, attached to the bracket that once, I assume (before I moved in here) held a shower curtain rod.  Then I could luxuriate in an intermittent flow of a gallon or so of water – tricky to wet down, soap up, rinse off, shampoo and rinse before it all ran out, but still preferable to standing on a towel by the wood stove in the living room for a sponge bath.

For years, those sponge baths were all I had, because the pile of dirty clothes in the bathtub just grew deeper.  Last year, by the time I’d recovered sufficiently from my illness to begin pulling things out of there and taking them to the laundromat, the top of the pile was above my head.  I discarded a lot, washed more, and, by the time last November when my car broke down there were only about five or six loads (in the big triple-load machines) left to be washed.  More dirty clothes accumulated through the winter, of course. 

Last month, when Greyfox drove up here for a medical appointment at Sunshine clinic, he drove in the ’93 Jeep he had just bought for me.  I had my laundry baskets full, loaded them into Binky the Jeep, and did four big loads that day after I dropped Greyfox off at his place.  This Monday, I did four more big loads of laundry — the last of our accumulated dirty clothes — at Wasilla Wash Day, the only laundromat I know of this side of Anchorage with high-speed extractors and, for that reason, my favorite laundromat.  Sunday night, I had loaded the dirty clothes into Binky and took my first shower in years — three years and seven months since those I took in the hospital.  My mother and Granny would say that I can get just as clean with a sponge bath, I know they would.  For that reason, I seriously doubt their wisdom, their veracity, or both.