A Little Retreat

Back in the days before furloughs and layoff scares, we had a few luxuries around this place. Like cable. I'm talking 70-plus channels of everything from Playboy Bunnies to Sportscenter to QVC. I also had more time, especially when I was pregnant.

Looking like I'd swallowed a basketball seemed a plenty good excuse to sit around and watch HGTV like a drunk zombie. Why, I would always think, if I had $35,000 to remodel a room in my house, would I pick the bathroom? I wouldn't, I'd tell myself. I'd put it into a room I spent more time in. We did, after all, remodel our kitchen a few years ago, an investment I could stomach. Don't get me wrong, we've updated our bathrooms in this house, but those jobs consisted of new tile and toilets. The extravagance was our beautiful pedestal sink in the upstairs bath. The total cost of that job was probably about $1,500. A price well worth it if you'd seen the stink hole it was before -- literally, there was no toilet for several months after we first moved in.

When I was pregnant I did begin to see that a master bath was not a luxury to be overlooked. How pleasant would it be to not share a bathroom with a toddler, I'd think? Seth was already having minor convulsions at the mere mention of bath toys and infant tubs.

Our bathroom, one of two in the house and the only one on the second floor, is cute. All 48 square feet of it. We used to joke about how one could literally use the toilet and brush his or her teeth at the same time. Sometimes multi-tasking is just inappropriate.

Now that I'm a Mom, I see the beauty of those spa-retreat-inspired bathrooms. The kind with cushioned benches, a separate WC and oh, those huge showers! The bathroom, it seems, is the only place I can go in my own house and be completely alone and not feel guilty. OK, to be honest, I do still feel guilty sometimes, like say, when Jasper's awake and I have to take a shower. He cries as he bangs on the crib bars. But I rationalize it by reminding myself he's safe. And I skip the extras like shaving my legs or standing under the warm water for a few extra minutes.

I remember as a kid that my mom would disappear to the bathroom for a while at times. And I recently learned my grandmother who doesn't smoke enjoys a cigarette in hers. And there's the story of my younger cousin who, as a toddler, got so pissed that her mother was enjoying a bath without her that she retrieved a bottle of ketchup from the fridge and squirted it all over the door -- a sort of see-what-happens-when-you-leave-me note.

Seth tells me that master bathrooms are over-rated. He, obviously, still gets his bathroom time, uninterrupted. He tells me that our lovely old home, built in 1907, has seen lots of families raised and surely all of them adjusted to life without a master bathroom or other luxuries such as great rooms, baby gates and air conditioning.

Well sure, people survived in 1907. But some great things have happened since then. Like women's suffrage, the invention of the dishwasher and immunizations that eradicated disease. And, my friends, the Master Bathroom.

Someday, I'll get mine. I probably still won't be able to spend a small fortune on it, and it likely won't feel just like I stepped into a spa. I don't even need multiple shower heads or garden tubs (although my own sink would be dreamy). If it's a place for a few solitary moments in what seems like an otherwise crazy house, it will be worth it.

And if Seth quibbles, I'll also remind him that the iPhone did not exist in 1907. That, I'm pretty sure, will register with him.