Shave Gel, and Pink Razors: How a Family Fits Together

By Jennifer Savage, 8-16-07

I got off the plane in Charlotte, N.C. near my parents’ house two weeks ago tired but happy to see them. Eliza had slept on two of our three flights that day and she was asleep again as my dad drove us down the eight-lane highway to his house.

Eliza woke to the humidity of the South in August, the cool of my parents’ house and an excited white dog at which she pointed and said, “Da?” We slept that night, a long journey complete. During the night I noticed I couldn’t get comfortable. My stomach was rolling and I couldn’t make it stop. By morning the rolling had turned into cramping and before I knew it I was in the middle of a bout with the stomach flu. As the morning went on and I got sicker and sicker, my 13-year-old sister realized that either she was going to have to take care of Eliza all day or she’d need to call in reinforcements. She opted for the latter and called my stepmother who kindly came home from work.

After about an hour my stepmother had fed Eliza, changed her diaper and clothes, pumped me full of Motrin and told me to go to bed, which I did. Then she, my sister and Eliza went out to visit. My stepmother is on the town council and pretty social. I think Eliza met the whole town that day but I would have no idea because I was curled tightly in my sister’s bed making deals with God, the Goddess or whomever happened to be listening. I finally went to sleep, my stomach empty, my head pounding. 

A few hours later I woke up cold and wanted to take a bath. I ran the water hot and climbed in. As I lay there I looked around at all of the bottles along the edges of the tub. Coconut shampoo. Vanilla conditioner. Spring breeze shave gel. Some sort of hair removal gel. Two girly smelling bars of soap. Two large bottles of shampoo-and-conditioner-in-one. Shower gel in a sassy black and red bottle. A new, pink razor.

For years my dad seemed to be the only one who used this bathroom. Then, one corner of the shelf around the tub held a bottle of shampoo and a bar of soap. That was it.

I sat up and looked at the counter around the sink. A basket on either side of the sink overflowed with hair clips and ponytail holders, whitening toothpaste and lotions. 

This is not my dad’s bathroom anymore, I thought. My sister had staked a claim. A gangly teenager, she had taken over and my father’s contact case and hairbrush had been pushed to the margins, all that remained of the austerity this room had once known.

I got out of the tub and dried off having warmed up in the hot water. I dressed and opened a drawer beside the sink. Tampons, makeup, lip gloss. It was true. My dad might as well start washing in a bucket in the backyard because he wasn’t going to re-assume ownership of this bathroom for many years. He’d lost the deed somewhere between my sister’s early infatuation with Brittany Spears and her current one with playing guitar hero. She’s grown up enough to care about what she looks like and any hope my dad had for a quiet four-foot by four-foot space to call his own is gone, at least until she leaves for college.

I can remember locking myself in this very bathroom when I was Sarah’s age. Taking hours long baths, listening to music, scribbling in a journal. I was trying to block out my one-year-old brother and only succeeded in irritating my stepmother. That was almost twenty years ago.

When I was born my dad was 24. He was 42 when my sister was born. When I was 13 my dad asked me if I wanted a baby brother. I told him no. He told me I better get used to the idea. He was 36 when my brother Matt was born.

Lately I’ve been doing lots of math problems. When my stepmother was my age she had my brother, her first child. When my dad’s mom was my brother’s age, she had my dad, her last child. When I was my sister’s age, my stepmother had my brother. When I was my brother’s age, my stepmother had my sister. 

I shared these little tidbits with Matt, who is 19, and Sarah. They couldn’t have been less interested.

“When this was my bathroom…you’d crawl up to the door and bang on it,” I told Matt. He looked down at me only the way a 19-year-old can and said, “So?”

“When I was your age, mama and daddy had Matt. Isn’t that crazy?” I said to my sister.

“Not really,” she said and continued to stare at the TV screen and play a fake guitar to music that was popular when…I was her age!

“When mama was my age Matt was Eliza’s age and I was your age!” My sister just ignored me but this age comparison stopped me cold.

When my brother was a year old my parents had me to deal with—a not-so-happy 14-year-old. I was bossy and difficult. I felt totally betrayed when my parents had my little brother, though it would take me years in therapy to discover this. I locked myself in rooms, I stomped around the house. Don’t get me wrong, I loved my little brother with his bowl haircut and speckled glasses, but I still wanted to make my parents pay for living their lives, for showing me that was not, in fact, the center of the universe. Looking back, I’m surprised my stepmother didn’t snap me in two.

My sister couldn’t have cared less about all of my jabbering but I couldn’t stop thinking about how these pieces fit together once then didn’t and now do again.

A few days after my bout with the flu, I decided to take a shower in my sister’s bathroom. I shampooed with the coconut smelling stuff and shaved with the Spring Breeze foaming shave gel. I treated this mama body to trip through shower products that it hadn’t seen in a long, long time. As I stood under the hot water in this place where I used to hide, I thought about the circle of things.

I use my sister’s razor, my brother calls my baby pookey as he’s headed out to meet his friends. My stepmother plays seventies music for Eliza, dances with her on the floor and takes her visiting all around town. And, my dad who has watched it all pass in front of him over the years, still doesn’t have a bathroom of his own.