We weren’t twins, but people could be forgiven for making that assumption. Just a year and two frosty months between us, adorned in the same garish 90’s t’shirts, pigtails bouncing on the same days, and matching beige sandals (dubbed ‘The Jesus ones’) in our end of school photo.
Legs intertwined in the cramped bath, money was sparse and m…
We weren’t twins, but people could be forgiven for making that assumption. Just a year and two frosty months between us, adorned in the same garish 90’s t’shirts, pigtails bouncing on the same days, and matching beige sandals (dubbed ‘The Jesus ones’) in our end of school photo.
Legs intertwined in the cramped bath, money was sparse and mums energy even more so.
As I sit in my own cramped bath now, no legs to intertwine with-just the grown bulk of me immersed in the suds, I fill an empty shampoo bottle and start to play.
I hold the bottle deep in the water and wait for the belching bubble to rupture the calm surface of white, silky swathes. This is when I know the bottle is brimmed-it wont hold any more.
I pour the hot, soapy liquid of the first bottle over my shoulders, a waterfall massage that loosens the muscles. I go on, refilling and emptying the bottle over different parts of me. I lift my feet and place them on the sides of the bath, start to cascade the water over the supple skin of my thighs.
As I start to fill the bottle to pour over my hair, a memory emerges. It comes in my chest, a fiery ball. I close my eyes and start to pour the water over my tilted head. As the water soaks in, I imagine its yours.
I am seven again, and you are eight.
The bathroom door is closed and we are safe inside the humidity of our bath time.
We sit facing each other, piling soap foam on our heads, aiming to get the pointiest peak, before mum comes in with the outstretched towel.
Our cheeks are rosy with heat and excitement, skin clammy and cleansed from too much soap, and neither of us wants to get out to dry off.
You get out first, walk into the wall of towel, before she wraps you tightly and kisses your cheek.
If only I could have filled the bottle with you as you were in that bath, before the self inflicted punctures on supple thighs, before we grew too far apart that you would assume we were strangers, let alone twins.
I would have put a lid on that bottle and poured you out now, soft skinned, naive, and my sister.
I pull the plug not long after, knowing this bath can’t hold any more.
Lauren! Welcome to the project. I will be reading all the new submissions that have come in over the bank holiday tomorrow and beginning to reply properly then. But given you're new to the project, I wanted to pop onto here quickly to say thank you. I will be back here in comments in the next few days once I've read your pieces to respond fully.
(Could you check your send settings please? I'm receiving multiple emails & notifications for each of the stories you're submitting which hasn't happened before in the few years I've been running this and receiving submissions. I get a notification each time a new comment is posted, and within a week always respond to any new story posts - although I can't of course keep track of every new comment community members make when reading and responding to eachother's contributions as they are SO many wonderful ones happening day and night on here!).
Lauren - this is the second of your pieces I've had the pleasure and privilege to read today. How glad I am you've joined the project. My own two children are close in age like this, and were often assumed to be twins. They bathed together every night til my son was seven, my daughter five. Then it naturally ended. In the summer holidays of that year I said they should put their swimsuits on (they'd become aware of their nakedness in a new way) for One Last Shared Bath. I handed them each a whole bottle of bubble bath and a kitchen whisk with the instruction to whip foam as high above the bath top as they could without it spilling over. I'd forgotten all the sensory rituals of those years, but your writing here - like all good writing about one's very particular memories - has taken me time-travelling in turn. Thank you.
How sharply sad the almost-ending of your piece - but then the love offering of your beautifully elegiac penultimate sentence.
We weren’t twins, but people could be forgiven for making that assumption. Just a year and two frosty months between us, adorned in the same garish 90’s t’shirts, pigtails bouncing on the same days, and matching beige sandals (dubbed ‘The Jesus ones’) in our end of school photo.
Legs intertwined in the cramped bath, money was sparse and mums energy even more so.
As I sit in my own cramped bath now, no legs to intertwine with-just the grown bulk of me immersed in the suds, I fill an empty shampoo bottle and start to play.
I hold the bottle deep in the water and wait for the belching bubble to rupture the calm surface of white, silky swathes. This is when I know the bottle is brimmed-it wont hold any more.
I pour the hot, soapy liquid of the first bottle over my shoulders, a waterfall massage that loosens the muscles. I go on, refilling and emptying the bottle over different parts of me. I lift my feet and place them on the sides of the bath, start to cascade the water over the supple skin of my thighs.
As I start to fill the bottle to pour over my hair, a memory emerges. It comes in my chest, a fiery ball. I close my eyes and start to pour the water over my tilted head. As the water soaks in, I imagine its yours.
I am seven again, and you are eight.
The bathroom door is closed and we are safe inside the humidity of our bath time.
We sit facing each other, piling soap foam on our heads, aiming to get the pointiest peak, before mum comes in with the outstretched towel.
Our cheeks are rosy with heat and excitement, skin clammy and cleansed from too much soap, and neither of us wants to get out to dry off.
You get out first, walk into the wall of towel, before she wraps you tightly and kisses your cheek.
If only I could have filled the bottle with you as you were in that bath, before the self inflicted punctures on supple thighs, before we grew too far apart that you would assume we were strangers, let alone twins.
I would have put a lid on that bottle and poured you out now, soft skinned, naive, and my sister.
I pull the plug not long after, knowing this bath can’t hold any more.
Lauren! Welcome to the project. I will be reading all the new submissions that have come in over the bank holiday tomorrow and beginning to reply properly then. But given you're new to the project, I wanted to pop onto here quickly to say thank you. I will be back here in comments in the next few days once I've read your pieces to respond fully.
(Could you check your send settings please? I'm receiving multiple emails & notifications for each of the stories you're submitting which hasn't happened before in the few years I've been running this and receiving submissions. I get a notification each time a new comment is posted, and within a week always respond to any new story posts - although I can't of course keep track of every new comment community members make when reading and responding to eachother's contributions as they are SO many wonderful ones happening day and night on here!).
Thanks Tanya.
Will do!
Lauren - this is the second of your pieces I've had the pleasure and privilege to read today. How glad I am you've joined the project. My own two children are close in age like this, and were often assumed to be twins. They bathed together every night til my son was seven, my daughter five. Then it naturally ended. In the summer holidays of that year I said they should put their swimsuits on (they'd become aware of their nakedness in a new way) for One Last Shared Bath. I handed them each a whole bottle of bubble bath and a kitchen whisk with the instruction to whip foam as high above the bath top as they could without it spilling over. I'd forgotten all the sensory rituals of those years, but your writing here - like all good writing about one's very particular memories - has taken me time-travelling in turn. Thank you.
How sharply sad the almost-ending of your piece - but then the love offering of your beautifully elegiac penultimate sentence.
Here is your link:
https://thecureforsleep.com/september-issue-on-time/#laurenlongshaw
Txx