Our house only had a bathtub and we took baths on Saturday night and maybe once during the week. The showers at summer camp were a novelty. My dorm at college had showers on each floor and one bathtub that we had to sign up to use. Sometime over the last few decades the norm requires daily showers in fancy spaces. With seats. Of marble.
Growing in Buffalo we called tap water Lake Erie. On our vacations up in northern Canada there was a water pump. As a kid, I thought it was so cool to pump and drink from the aluminum cup that hung there. Lunch boxes came with a thermos which was used mostly for soup. Sometime over the last few decades the norm requires bottled water of all sorts. Plain or flavored. In plastic. Easy to carry. Easy to discard.
I’m probably a typical recycler, trying to remember to put my empty bottle in the right bin. Trying to remember to not run the water the whole time while I’m brushing my teeth. “We all live by robbing nature, but our standard of living demands that the robbery will continue,” wrote poet Wendell Berry. Now, there’s nothing wrong with a refreshing daily shower. There’s nothing wrong with bottled water. Perhaps there is something wrong with our norms. I read somewhere that the next world war will be over water rights. Before it comes to that, there are probably some things we each could change. Don’t know about you, but I intend to give those norms some more thought and reevaluate my expectations and needs.
Marilyn
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