Desperately seeking normality

Aug. 19, 2004

Dear Julie,

Six months after it began, our bathroom renovation is done. What took so long?

DC and I certainly contributed to the slowness of this construction project. We had no plan going in and changed the blueprint that did evolve a few times. We moved a doorway and played musical chairs with the Jacuzzi and the toilet.

But the question of why this took six months might as well be a Zen koan. There is no rational answer.

Rome may not have been built in a day, but if every bathroom had taken half a year the empire might have been too busy with plumbing to conquer the world.

The exact date our project began is lost in the mists of my memory. It was approximately half a year of workmen dropping in and out of our life, of descending narrow, dark stairs in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and of showering in the basement.

Early on, we went into the bathroom after returning home from work to see what had been accomplished while we were away. After weeks and then months of being unable to discern any change, we concluded it must take a trained eye. We stopped going into the bathroom.

We began to consider the bathroom no longer part of the house. It was on another planet. Out of necessity, we explored new pathways in our day-to-day life.

But we also missed our sense of normalcy.

Now we love the new bathroom. We celebrated the end of the project by taking a shower and a Jacuzzi -- one of each.

Normal now is water pouring out of the bathroom ceiling from a "rainmaker" showerhead. The shower is big enough for three or four people. Not sure why.

The Jacuzzi fits one or two, soothes smarting muscles and minds.

DC is fondest of the new sink, a clear glass bowl perched on a black granite counter. The water emerges from a single spout in the wall. It has a Zen quality.

The purpose of a Zen koan is to dislocate your habitual response to the world. One revelatory to me is about the burden of guilt:

"Two monks were once traveling together down a muddy road. A heavy rain was falling. Coming around a bend, they met a lovely girl in a silk kimono and sash, unable to cross the intersection.

"Come on, girl," said the first monk. Lifting her in his arms, he carried her over the mud.

The second monk did not speak again until that night when they reached a lodging temple. Then he no longer could restrain himself. "We monks don't go near females," he said. "It is dangerous. Why did you do that?"

"I left the girl there," the first monk said. "Are you still carrying her?"

I feel guilty complaining about six months of relatively mild discomfort.

I think this experience has been a lesson about becoming too attached to habit.

DC thinks we now should turn the half-bath on the main floor into a full bath.

We should live so long.

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is managing editor of the Southeast Missourian.