It seems that at night my brain must have as a matter of course something rattling around in it in order to keep me from sleeping. Why sleep deprivation is important to my brain, I cannot say. Sometimes it is a piece of music that I would prefer to forget. Sometimes it is a fixation on some unpleasant event in my life. Sometimes it's making a list of groceries I need to buy the next day and which I will have completely forgotten by the morning.
Last night it was a song. Tubby Time. I made up the song a long time ago and I used to sing it when my little boy and I would take a bath together. Tubby time. Oh tubby tubby tubby tubby time. Oh tubby tubby tubby tubby time. I like that time. Tubby tubby tubby tubby time.
That's it. And like the dreadful "Song That Has No End", Tubby Time repeats over and over and has no end. I have only myself to blame.
But what struck me this morning, having awakened with Tubby Time still ricocheting around the basin of my cranium, is how odd it now seems that my son and I once took baths together. I cannot recapture from my memory the experience of being so completely comfortable together that there was nothing at all uncomfortable about being naked in the same bathtub. Nothing at all. Rather, it seemed the most natural thing in the world. The memory is intact in its factual sense, but has sloughed off the stuff of emotion. Of course, this was many years ago--some 40 years ago--a reality which itself seems suspect when I think about it. Has it really been 40 years? What happened?
And yet something remains, like a water ring in that same basin of my cranium--something that has become part of bone and marrow.
Last night it was a song. Tubby Time. I made up the song a long time ago and I used to sing it when my little boy and I would take a bath together. Tubby time. Oh tubby tubby tubby tubby time. Oh tubby tubby tubby tubby time. I like that time. Tubby tubby tubby tubby time.
That's it. And like the dreadful "Song That Has No End", Tubby Time repeats over and over and has no end. I have only myself to blame.
But what struck me this morning, having awakened with Tubby Time still ricocheting around the basin of my cranium, is how odd it now seems that my son and I once took baths together. I cannot recapture from my memory the experience of being so completely comfortable together that there was nothing at all uncomfortable about being naked in the same bathtub. Nothing at all. Rather, it seemed the most natural thing in the world. The memory is intact in its factual sense, but has sloughed off the stuff of emotion. Of course, this was many years ago--some 40 years ago--a reality which itself seems suspect when I think about it. Has it really been 40 years? What happened?
And yet something remains, like a water ring in that same basin of my cranium--something that has become part of bone and marrow.
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