Do you have a happy place? Maybe it’s a crowded shopping mall where you can be yourself in anonymity. Maybe it’s grandma’s house with its smell of old newspapers and yummy cookies. Maybe it’s a vacation destination; a chair in the sand on the beach somewhere or a log cabin in the mountains. My happy place is my bathroom.
Before you find yourself thinking “the Wifflette must still not be sleeping, Katie’s losing it…” let me explain what I mean. I love a hot shower. Alone. It’s not just the water or the quiet, though. It’s this room. In the shower this morning, I found myself marveling at this, my favorite room in the house, once again. What is it about the bathroom that makes it my favorite place? It’s not very spacious and far from luxurious. There’s toothpaste dried on the sink and water splatters on the mirror. This room is central to the house, with its own non-adjustable vent. So, it’s toasty warm in the winter and stays cool in the summer; perfect in every season when I step with bare feet out of the shower onto the peeling linoleum. The door is still cracked from three years ago when the Big Bad Wiff needed to get in so desperately that he huffed and he puffed and he booty bumped the door down to be with me. Speaking of damage caused by the eldest Wifflette, directly in front of me there’s a chip in the porcelain on the bathtub from a particularly rambunctious fire truck. If I squint hard enough, it looks like a cat on a fence shining through. To my right, there are the runny red remnants of last night’s bathtub lesson on rhyming words painted on the wall. Bat. Mat. Sat. Hat. Cat. I guess that makes two cats in this bathtub…. I smile at my joke and tip my head back to rinse my hair. As I look up, the smile on my face only broadens because I see the result of the hard work of my dedicated husband. His 6’2″ frame squeezed up into the tiny and way-to-hot attic to install this fan. He’s added so many skills to his resume of DIY tricks since we moved into this house.
I have this near-obsession with the idea that imperfection lends itself to beauty. As a Christian, I guess this is a reassurance of sorts in God’s unfailing love for broken, sinful me. Created in His image, I also love broken things; not in spite of their brokenness, but because of it. It goes beyond that, though, because the things in life that bring a smile to my face and make me happiest are the imperfect things. Without all that beautiful brokenness, this bathroom would just be four pale blue walls and some necessities. With it, I have a daily reminder of the love and life in this house. I came here, to my happy place, for a retreat from my crazy life. But I know I’ll never run far. Whether I remembered to lock the door or not, they’re here with me. I guess that’s what it is… Wherever there is love and family, that’s my happy place.
~Wiff Love
Wiff Love 