baths
Anyone not yet convinced that our understanding of time as a linear construct is based on nothing more than convenience should have the opportunity to watch a child grow. Maturity comes in fits and starts. Yesterday my precious jewel made his first solo trip to the grocery store and yet today he has decided to once again include toys in the bath, a practice mostly abandoned for the past year.
I traversed my own memories of childhood baths, remembering how much I enjoyed bathing in the company of a herd of Breyer horses that would bob in the wake of my movements, crashing loudly into the walls of the tub. One of the horses leaked. He wasn't a true Breyer horse and he had a seam along his belly. Water would seep into the horse until he eventually found his way to the bottom of our private sea. How I would delight in picking him up and watching the water stream out that crack until he was light enough to float again.
My companions were naturally ruined from a collector's perspective, faded in spots from their frequent immersions in rough seas. Their batterings had them well set up for life in real pastures, however, should there have been in any truth to the stories told by the Velveteen Rabbit's companion in the nursery.