I remember the tub shower at my grandparents’ house. The bathroom didn’t have a fan and the old sash window was hard to open and didn’t do much good, so the room always steamed up like a sauna. The hot water valve opened counter-clockwise, which is normal. But the cold opened backwards, so you had to be careful. You had to think about what you were doing. After you moved the handled on hot or cold, there was a brief delay, before you lived out the consequences of your choice. But then somebody almost always ran water in the kitchen sink, so you were going to cook anyway.

There was this green soap in the soapdish. It had a strong, familiar scent. It came to smell like being loved, like being in a place where the world didn’t know to go looking for you. It smelled like a home beyond home.

They’re gone. Papa in the Fall of ’02, then Grandma last summer. The house has been sold. I usually use oatmeal or almond soap from Trader Joe’s. But the other day I was seriously out and using the hard-milled hand soap I use at the sink. So I was in the store, and there was Irish Spring, original scent. It was on sale, eight bars for $3.50.

You may as well know the effect is not the same. Here in the condo, the world knows precisely where I am. And venerating these memories will not keep me safe or grant me serenity. I’m riding the rock with the rest of you, as the poor old thing tilts injudiciously into another summer.

At least I smell nice. And here’s a poem from March 2000, in which I mention the soap. Man, 44 cents a bar. You can’t beat a deal like that with a stick, especially when they throw in memories.

CERTAIN STREETS

Time passes, so I get up every morning.
I have soap that smells insanely like spring
in an Irish meadow, with a waterfall.
I take a pill, brush my hair and talk
to the dog while calculating how long
it has been since you called. Seven months,
so I drive to work. The yellow fog burns
back to the water’s edge and leaves
a brilliant path for me. I stay back three
seconds from the cars ahead and listen as
the stock market drops through the morning
light. If time goes on, I have lunch in the park,
where the wind blows debris over the
redwood tables and benches and tall redwoods sway,
ignoring the rough-hewn irony. Everything
hums through the afternoon; computer,
printer, people and lights. At three o’clock
I have coffee, then drive home at dusk
through the city where I see you float,
silk in a cyclone of unremitting weeks.
Should I call? I’m sure there will be time,
some morning, evening, afternoon, when
the clock is resting in a shadow on the wall.

© 2000 by Kyle Kimberlin