Bathroom

Edith has always followed me into the bathroom but for a long time, she was interested in crawling around in the shower and investigating some drawers that are on the floor and other things, so I was able to use the actual bathroom in peace. She had no interest in the little room where the actual toilet is.

But that window has closed and now she wants to crawl around the toilet floor and pat at the toilet bowl and stick her hand in it and so on, which of course, I am not inclined to allow. But Edith has never been one to accept a message when it runs contrary to her preferences, so now every morning, I dump her on the bedroom floor and race to the toilet and try to pee before she gets there. I hear an exclamation and frantic scuffling behind me, and before I can finish, I see her happy, smiling face crest around the doorframe, so confident and secure in being welcomed everywhere she goes, and I have to hastily slam the door in it.

Her little shriek of wounded outrage gets me, every time. She then begins to pummel the door in fury. And I really feel like this is just motherhood all over — it’s not so much that I can’t even take a piss without being available to someone, it’s that I don’t even think I should be able to. I sit there actually feeling guilty that I have momentarily shut her out when she just wants to be with me. (Even though she does not want to be with me; she wants to be with the toilet.)