My Bathroom Secret I Think You Just Might Understand
My husband caught me.
Not in a secret, per se.
But certainly something I’ve been able to keep it to myself through almost four years of marriage.
“Sure does take you a long time to blow dry your hair,” he remarked the other day.
“Yeah, sure does,” I agreed pointing to what I thought was my perfect alibi—the huge mop of hair on my head.
“What exactly do you do in there?” he asked, raising an eyebrow of suspicion.
“Brush, dry and read,” I answered as succinctly as possible.
“Read?” He was onto me. “Like what?”
“Right now, I’m reading James Michener’s ‘The Covenant.’”
“Is that some new beauty book?”
“No, it’s a 1248-page historical fiction novel set in South Africa.”
There it was.
The Look.
That one a man gives when a woman says something that makes perfect sense to her, but sounds like Swahili to him.
Which explains this week’s confession.
Yes, I read as I blow dry my hair.
Might seem silly or embarrassing to say.
Except to you.
Well, because we share stuff here in this space, you and I.
Stuff, we didn’t know other people think about.
Let alone talk about.
Yet, somehow you and I do.
And I know from your email.
Your many many emails, that you, too, Dear Reader, are a reader.
Boy, are you a reader!
You think nothing of dropping me suggestions about books you love.
Or making a case for print books over ebooks.
It’s with that in mind, that I feel comfortable sharing with you that which I hid from Husband for four years.
Yeah, I read while I blow dry my hair.
Odd perhaps, I’ll give you that.
Yet, perfect.
The whrrrr of the blow dryer drowns out distractions.
Like demanding family members.
Or a certain overly vocal 3-legged cat wondering where her, aka, my, lap has gone.
No one wants to, dares to, bother me while create a nuclear cloud of steam in the bathroom.
I can read in my version of peace.
Either I lean up my Kindle against the mirror.
Or I use two bars of unused soap to prop open a print book to the proper page.
One hand on blow dryer.
Other on big round brush.
And here you were thinking I’m not talented.
It is possible I take a bit longer than maybe I need.
I could dry an African lion’s mane in the amount of time I spend in there.
I know you get it.
Your treasured time when you read.
Is there a secret you need to share?
I thought Husband would be shocked at mine.
“Historical fiction?” was his response.
His technical, literal-loving brain went into overdrive.
“Is it history or fiction? Because it can’t be both.”
“It’s fiction set in history,” I explained.
There was The Look.
Again.
I smiled.
My reading confession is out, but the mystery written into this marriage will clearly continue for a long time to come.
(((Please catch my column each week in The Atlanta Journal Constitution, The Dayton Daily News and other Cox Newspapers across the country.)
And if you like my column about figuring out this marriage thing, you might like my book–
