In July, John and I will celebrate our 25th anniversary. I have sworn that the secret to a happy marriage is separate bathrooms. Really and truly, that’s the only advice I’ve ever shared with newlyweds.
But to be frank, for all but our first three years as a married couple, we maintained separate bathrooms. (Why did we share during those first three years? Was it wedded bliss? No, it was that our first two apartments had only one bathroom.)
As soon as we moved into a place with two bathrooms, I took over one of them. And thus it has stayed — through moves, through pregnancies, through children, through two houses with tiny master bathrooms, the kind we could only share if one person stood at the sink and one sat on the toilet. There is such a thing as too much togetherness.
And then we bought a new house. Built in 1999, this one is the newest we’ve owned. This master bathroom is, in a word, vast. There are two sinks (please applaud). Not only could one person stand and the other sit, but one person could do a cartwheel while the other shaves. Have I tested this theory? Has my husband done a cartwheel while I shaved my legs?
What happens in the bathroom stays in the bathroom.
One month into this new level of cohabitation we’re doing well. We’ve lived together long enough and endured sufficient crises to rise to meet this new challenge. Okay, it might be that after 25 years we’re set in our ways. We shower at different times — him, before work; me, after exercising. The only time we get ready simultaneously occurs before church.
Although, to be fair, I have discovered a privacy option: a walk-in closet.
This is another luxury we have not had previously, except during our first year of marriage, when the only apartment available was a unit built for wheelchair accessibility. But this closet dwarfs that one. It’s so big we moved in our dresser. Because we could, that’s why.
One of the dogs claimed the corner under the built-ins as her den. Heck, both dogs could co-camp in our closet. They’re only terriers, after all. But I bet we could get two Labs in this closet. But then there would be no room for our shoes. However, if we had Labs, they’d eat all our shoes, so there you have it. No Labs, safe shoes, happy terriers.
I have seen bathrooms and closets bigger than ours in the pages of the WACOAN magazine. I have interviewed homeowners for those pages with grander porcelain palaces. Some have not only two sinks, a shower, a toilet, and space for cartwheeling, but also a tub.
Our master bathroom lacks this amenity. If I want to take a bath, I have to walk to the other side of the house, to the guest bathroom. In which I have already taken over a drawer and most of a cabinet. Because some days, even in the midst of halcyon marital harmony, you need your own bathroom.
