Who Would Have Thought?

It was just an ordinary event. One that millions of people all over Australia, Chile, Brazil, Russia, Canada, and Mexico perform every day.

But first there were days and nights, endless days. Hospitals, wheelchairs, and beds. Later, there were walkers, a PICC line, bags of fluid, iv tubing, and needles. Many needles. Much later, there was a cane.

Eventually, just when anticipation wore thin, the cane was cast aside. She held on to the walls instead.

But today is a new beginning, a reason for celebration. She turned on the water, hot first and then cold. She turned the middle control knob and Poof! A shower of waterfall proportions cascaded onto her soft skin. They beaded up and collected on her shoulders, leaving miniscule pink dots that coalesced into a patch of pink skin.

There was no hesitation as she lifted first the shampoo, and then the conditioner to do her hair. The yellow loofa sponge scrubbed dead skin from the first two layers of the epidermis. It was an old feeling, like riding a bike.

At the end, she lifted one leg and then another to dry them. There was not hesitation, no rocking, no falling. Just smooth movements. And so, without any further ado, she lifted first one leg and then another to depart her short stay in the Shower.

Not a bath. A Shower.

It was perhaps her first Shower in four years.

It was a Shower.