2024-2025 WOW! Q1 CNF ESSAY CONTEST FINALIST.
“Come with me young lady,” Dad said as he grabbed my arm and steered me down the hall. He entered the guest bathroom, pulled me in, and closed the door. “You will not talk to me like that!” he scolded.
As we stood in a room barely big enough for the two of us, my eyes darted back and forth between him and our reflection in the mirror. Cowering in his powerful paternal presence, I felt small and scared. I wished I could eat my words instead of what was to come. They’d flown out of my mouth almost involuntarily, as they often did when I was a teenager.
Dad grabbed the soap from the dish beside the sink and aimed it toward me. “Open!” he ordered. He shoved the soap into my mouth. The bitter flavor overwhelmed my taste buds and burned my tongue. “Bite down!” he barked.
I sank my teeth into the white waxy bar, my anger clenching its fists in silent opposition. With my teeth still embedded, Dad pulled the bar out, leaving bits of soap stuck to the backs of my teeth. He returned the soap to its dish, opened the door, and walked out.
Furious and sobbing, I grabbed a washcloth to wipe the soap residue from my mouth. But I couldn’t erase the bitterness. It would linger for hours, an enduring reminder of the punishment I earned for daring to let sarcasm slip from my lips.
I have very few memories from childhood, yet this one is vivid. It’s a memory I wish I could forget. One I had forgotten for nearly five decades. One that resurfaced as I stood alone in the guest bathroom of Mom and Dad’s house.
I had returned home to bury Dad.
I was curling my hair and putting on makeup when my eyes drifted from my reflection to the counter, where I noticed the soap dish had been replaced with a liquid soap dispenser.
Do parents still wash out their kids’ mouths with soap? I wondered. Liquid soap can’t be shoved into a mouth. There’s nothing to bite into. But oh how it would coat the teeth! I suspected mouthwashing might now be considered child abuse.
My curiosity prompted a Google search that validated my assumption. In 2009, a Florida mother was arrested for washing out her daughter’s mouth with soap. After being forced to hold the soap in her mouth for ten minutes, the eight-year-old began vomiting. She was taken to the hospital and staff members called the police.
No one called the police on my behalf.
I grew up in the sixties and seventies and I don’t think my parents, or most parents, thought twice about mouthwashing, spanking, or even belt whipping. These were typical punishments from what I’ve gathered through research, personal experience, and talking to friends.
Dad and I never discussed the soap incidents. We rarely revisited the past. As an adult, my relationship with him was more cordial than close. I never gave our lack of intimacy much thought, until the end of his life.
When I realized time was running out, I began yearning to know him better. I started asking more questions when we talked. I didn’t bring up our difficult times: the mouthwashing, his disapproval of the man I chose to marry, or his initial refusal to participate in our wedding. However, my queries did lead to deeper discussions. He reminisced about growing up in Missouri and Illinois, shared his career regrets, and reflected on his impending death.
“Where do you think we go when we die?” Dad asked one day. “I don’t believe in all that heaven and hell stuff the church teaches.”
I was surprised by his dismissiveness. My parents had attended Sunday mass every week until their health began declining.
“Many people report seeing a bright light when they die, and being greeted by loved ones who’ve already passed,” I answered.
“I want to see my father,” Dad replied. “I have so many questions. I don’t know why I never asked my mother about him.”
Dad was eleven months old when his father died. His mother never remarried. Dad grew up without a dad.
As I think back to that day in Mom and Dad’s guest bathroom, I can’t help but wonder why my thoughts latched onto the mouthwashing memory. Why did that memory scream Look at me! when all I wanted to do was look away?
As I prepared to say my final goodbyes to Dad, I wanted to remember the good times. The way he sat proudly in the stands at my high school track meets. All the mornings he got up in the predawn hours to run with me because my cross-country coach insisted we train before school. And, the time he accompanied my sister and me to Girl Scout camp, with all the other mothers, because camping wasn’t Mom’s thing.
These positive memories only surfaced after some serious searching. But the mouthwashing memory refuses to be forgotten, fills my head with questions, and reminds me of the conversations Dad and I never had.
As I write this, two years after burying my father, still processing his death, still grappling with grief, it’s Dad’s words of regret that echo loudest in my head.
They are now my words. My wish. My regret.
“I want to see my father. I have so many questions. I don’t know why I never asked….”