Soap
Sunday, July 13, 2014 at 03:02AM Can you have a daily miracle, or is that an oxymoron? If something is daily, does that disqualify it from being miraculous?
In any case, if you can have a daily miracle, it seems to me that soap is one; the humblest, most overlooked symbol of civilisation.
Each evening, after I get home from a long day at work and the many kilometres of walking that involves, I hop in a hot shower (another underrated wonder) and pick up a small piece of soap. It turns smoothly, easily around in my hand, and gives up a layer of itself. Now my hand, soap-coated, can go anywhere, washing off the grease and grit, the grime and sweat of my day.
We buy the stuff in bulk from the supermarket or our local food co-op: cheap, unpackaged, unperfumed, a nondescript cream colour. No matter that is inexpensive and simple – it does the job.
And, little by little, it disappears. From shower beginning to end, you can’t see any diminution of a cake of soap, but after a few days, it has shrunk from a fat bar to a middle sized bar to a sliver and then one day it slips out of your hand and it is so tiny it doesn’t seem worth the effort of bending over to pick it up. Or, before you can rescue it from the shower floor, it slithers to the plug hole where you step on it by mistake and it squooshes down through the holes of the drain and is gone.
The only time that soap is objectionable is when left submerged for too long. One time, camping, I gritted my teeth and fished in our murky hand-washing basin for what I thought was our soap, left to disintegrate overnight by accident. Only to discover, when I retrieved the slimy object from the depths of the basin that it was not a cake of soap but a small, dead mouse that must have fallen in and drowned.
We try and be vigilant about washing our hands with soap when we are camping, but the rest of our bodies has no contact with the stuff. Instead, we swim each day, get used to living with a layer of dirt and camp fire smoke and perspiration, and relax in the knowledge that none of our companions will notice our smell as we are all in the same state of unwashedness.
Once we get home, however, the sheer unbridled pleasure of a hot shower with soap can’t be underestimated.
The earliest recorded evidence of the production of soap-like materials dates back to around 2800 BC in ancient Babylon. But it wasn’t until the industrial revolution in the West that soap began to be mass-produced and its use encouraged because of the link that was discovered between basic hygiene and avoiding disease.
Prior to that, I imagine soap was only for the rich. If we were plonked down in the middle of a medieval city, the thing we would notice first would be the smells – mainly of unprocessed sewerage and unwashed people. These days, even those living in slums have soap; it is only the homeless who have to do without, and express how demeaning it is to be so obviously lacking in this small but significant indicator of a civilised society.
Granted, we now err in the opposite direction; we are too obsessed with cleanliness and hygiene – adding to the pollution of our waters and the diminution of our immune systems.
Be that as it may, one of life’s simplest daily pleasures for me is getting out of my evening shower, towelling briskly off this cold weather and wrapping myself in soft pyjamas and dressing gown. I am ready for bed, for rest and sleep after a day that is often tiring and complicated. I feel fresh and clean and sweet-smelling and innocent and child like again. All due to the small, humble, daily miracle of soap.
Reader Comments (2)
Thank you Clare, for drawing my attention to this humble commodity which I use every day. I was instantly reminded of the harrowing scene involving a cake of soap in the film "12 Years a Slave" which I watched recently. I like how you point out that we are fortunate to have this item, and hot showers, as a routine part of our daily lives without needing to even think about the luxury of them.
Thank you Clare for your gift of elevating the small things that are often overlooked. Your piece sent me back to that old prayer book from the 1960's - Prayers of Life by Michel Quoist. In it he has a prayer titled 'Thank You" which is a meditation on everyday blessings. He says in an introduction "Everything is a gift from God, even the smallest things, and it's the sum of these gifts that makes life beautiful or sad, depending on how we use them." (p.47) Thank you for reminding us.