Growing Up Girls

---The below excerpt is a chapter from my debut memoir, Temple and Ash---

It is nearing bedtime, and my younger sister Casey exhales dramatically as we sit side-by-side in the bathtub, scrubbing the shower walls with our soapy rags. 

Together, we bemoan the devious Evil Step-Mother for forcing us into such cruel indentured servitude and preventing us from being outside instead, singing and dancing with the birds. I lean

over to inspect her work, informing her that she has missed a spot. We let out a collective sigh.

Then suddenly, the shower curtain is yanked open, and we both scream at the unsuspected attack. Dad cackles like the villain from a horror film and tells us that The Evil Step-Mother has sent him. We squeal with delight, unaware that he had been listening in on another one of our imaginary plots, and is now decidedly casting himself a role in it.

Dad dips his fingers in the bathtub and recoils. “How do you two troublemakers stay in this water so long? It’s freezing!”

“The Evil Step-Mother told us we had to,” my baby sister admits, with sad eyes and an extra-pouty lip to really sell it.

Just then, Mom pops her head into the bathroom: “What’s all this about an evil mother?!” 

Casey and I can no longer hold down the act. We erupt into a fit of giggles. “Not you, Mom!” I say, defensively. “It’s the mean ol’ lady Dad marries after you’re dead!”

She gasps dramatically, clutching her chest and feigning deep anguish that even in our fictional world, we have wasted no time killing her off. “Clearly you have been watching too much Cinderella,” she says, her face relaxing into a playful smile.

Dad pulls the drain out of the tub and turns on the shower so his two shivering girls can warm up. He calls this part “The Rainforest,” and it is our absolute favorite way to end bath time play. He asks if we’ve washed, and we are noticeably hurt that he hasn’t taken note of our tedious work scrubbing the tub walls. I motion to the glistening tiles, and he grins as he reaches for the bar of soap. Clearly, he is not as concerned with the cleanliness of the shower as The Evil Step-Mother. 

Casey and I dance naked in The Rainforest, celebrating our victory over the villain of our own making. We take turns standing under the hot stream of running water so Dad can rinse the suds off as Mom gets two towels ready. This is our ritual, and we relish every last moment of it. 

After we climb dripping out of the tub, Casey and I each stand and flip our long, brown hair over so that Mom and Dad can towel-dry our wet heads. They give each other a knowing look, and then, in unison, begin emphatically drying our hair while shouting “paint shaker, paint shaker, paint shaker!” Casey and I are a pile of giggles. It wasn’t until college that I found out that other families do not, in fact, play “Paint Shaker”.

Once our hair is mostly dry, Mom and Dad wrap us each in a towel, and my sister and I lie side-by-side with our knees tucked into our chests, curled up in a ball on the floor. We call this part “Turtles on a Rug,” (because obviously, every part of our shared imaginary world has to have a name). 

Casey and I make one last attempt to evade bedtime by streaking through the hallway, leaving our damp towels in a pile on the bathroom floor for our Evil Step-Mother, who is becoming increasingly less impressed with our games of make-believe. 

Mom catches up to us and wrestles us into our pajamas one by one, threatening to make us wash the whole house next time. We promise to be good, and she tucks us into bunk beds with a kiss on each of our foreheads. 

Once she turns out the lights and the room grows quiet, I hear Casey’s small voice from the bunk below ask, “Hand?” 

“Hand,” I affirm, as I flip onto my stomach and drop my right hand down along the wall side of our conjoined beds. She raises hers to meet mine, and we just stay like that—hand in hand—until one of us falls asleep.

Casey & I at Lake Michigan circa 2001

The entirety of my childhood can be summed up in a moment such as this. Life on quaint Lake Grove Avenue was punctuated by bicycle rides to the local ice cream shop and summer block parties complete with face paint, yard games, and freeze-pops. It was just about as picturesque as you could get. 

Even looking back now with a bird’s-eye view and 20-plus years of education and life experience, I can’t pinpoint the moment when it all changed. Maybe because it wasn’t a singular moment at all. Maybe because it happened so slowly, so subtly, that I unwittingly became the frog who gets too comfortable in the frying pan. I didn’t notice everything around me growing hotter until it was too late. 

I just know that one summer, I was running wild and naked in the sunshine, and the next, I had to wear a swimsuit. The summer after that, even my swimsuit was not enough to shield me from eyes that lingered too long. 

Somewhere in the mix, that playful, fearless girl building fantasy worlds in the bathtub learned to look down at the skin she lived in and feel shame. Shame for how my body grew and changed. Shame for the attention it garnered. Shame for liking it.

And now this: my body is changing yet again. Growing new life. A daughter. What of the world I am bringing her into? If I, having been raised by the two best parents imaginable, still managed to fall victim to this culture that profits off of insecurity and self-hatred, then what hope does she have? 

I ache in this knowing. That she too will face all the same entrapments. That she will come to know pain and insecurity and shame. And yet, every motherly instinct within me seeks to defy logic; seeks a different ending.

This story—my story—it is for her.  

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