On (or around, or inside) the Toilet

“I have boo boo owie,” she tells me with tears in her eyes.

“Where does it hurt,” I ask as she thrusts her thumb into my face.

“Oh,” I say, “it’s all red and irritated. What will make it feel better?”

“Med’cin,” she says.

“Well, the apothecary is closed today. How about a Band Aid brand of bandage? You can get stuck on it, but it won’t get stuck on you.”

“Okay!” She toddles off to the bathroom, skimming a wall and bouncing over the threshold and climbs on the toilet seat to await the cleaning and bandaging of her soul threatening wound.

I have a thought. If we are here to clean and sanitize a wound, why is it that we do it upon a toilet, where we deposit our waste? Donna Reed pops into my mind and says, “Don’t be silly! Mothers have been using the bathroom as the infirmary for many years.”

“But the fecal matter and urine!”

Brad Pitt, as Tyler Durden replaces Donna Reed. He reminds me not to listen to her, as she did play an “escort” in From Here to Eternity. Judging the trip from here to eternity, by way of Dayton, would be a very long trip he exclaims “Urine is sterile. You can drink it!”*

Meanwhile, as I’m talking to my imaginary Hollywood friends, Gertrude’s lower lip quivers. “I hurt ,” she tells me.

Okay. We bathe the sore thumb, with no real visible wound, in water. It is a psychic wound. Far more dangerous than a cut. We dab it dry and apply the bandage.

In a transformation not unlike when Sauruman is cast from Theoden, the sadness melts from Gertrude’s face and she is happy once again. She bounds from the bathroom/infirmary and runs away to play another day.

I’m overcome. Not with love, but bemusement at her willingness to play with the universe.

Two minutes later she returns, with her thumb thrust up in the air like Dale Cooper encountering a particularly wonderful cup of coffee.

“I feel bedder,” she says. So we remove the bandage. Her wound healed not by medicine, but comfort.

A bond is formed. A bond that is more concrete than the day we go out for the paper and she was frightened.

Above us a helicopter flies and Gertrude leaps into my arms (stop me if you’ve heard this one).

“Wasat,” she asks.

“A helicopter,” I say.

“Cobby cobby,” she asks.

“Yes, a cobby cobby.”

“I skared,” she tells me.

“Don’t worry,” I tell her as she pushes her head into my chest, “I’ll protect you.”

“You protect?”

“Yes, I protect. I protect all of you.”

“You protect!”

I guess I’ve done my job well. Seeing the cobby cobby is a ritual now. And we routinely look for airplanes when we hear one. Especially when it’s dark out.

“Uplane!”

Someday she’ll start asking me about space. And I’ll tell her, preparing her for her first launch. And we’ll all go down to Cape Canaveral together and see our first manned spaceflight launch together (can you believe I’ve never seen one!). We’ll feel the thunder of the thrust against us and our mouths will drop. We won’t say it, of course, but we’ll marvel over our species flying beyond the troposphere, beyond our planet’s thin skin and beyond anything we’ve ever seen. And at night she’ll look at the stars with Matilda and me and ask what’s out there. Or why. And we’ll talk about an old friend who used to stand on our step for hours with me, looking at the beyond.

And all because I protect. It’s true, I do protect. But I push limits too. The universe bites, and will never be tamed. That’s the beauty of the universe. But, hopefully, she’ll keep pushing and will forever move beyond her current boundaries.

All I can do is show the girls where the boundaries are. It’s their job to find out where they go.

Once, because of a book she read, Matilda wanted to know how a toilet worked. “I have an idea,” I said, “but I really don’t know.” So we got the tools out and proceeded to take apart the toilet.

Mom came in. “Um, what are you guys doing,” she asked, seeing us soaked up to our shoulders holding the inlet valve and flapper in our hands.

“Learning! It’s just a lever and gravity!” we answered.

I just hope Gertrude and Matilda take me with them. Or enlighten me with their discoveries. I hope, as they reach ever higher they thank me for the questions I answered and pushing them to find the answers they need to find on their own. I hope they relish the questions we answered together.

*See Fight Club: Special Edition extras for explanation.

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