When we’d put off her first bath embarrassingly long enough, I finally placed the wailing newborn in my parents’ oversized stainless steel salad bowl, on their deck, in the fishhook of August heat. I counted to ten: a newborn bath should take about as long as roasting a marshmallow, or dipping cantaloupe in chocolate fondue.

“Delay” is the recommendation for the bath in the hospital. Always late to the party, we “delayed” almost an entire moon cycle, until Mercury was in bath-e-grade. During a particularly ragged 3AM feed, I paced in the thinning dark, nursing her while walking to stay awake, when suddenly, the vanishing stars became didactic. Orion lashed my consciousness with his scar-crossed belt: BATHE HER! (Ya know-it-all-male-bastard, how about you get your ass down here and try?). The Big Dipper dangled like Damocles sword, an accusatory oversized diaper pail. Aren’t you going to at least DIP her in something water-like? I was a trash parent, wasn’t I? I could handle this.

With the baby draped over my shoulder, I hunted through the cabinets for something usable. It seemed safe enough: stainless steel is gleamingly nontoxic. You can’t really slip or drown in a salad bowl, unless you try very very very hard, something newborns are not known for. For me, a diehard vegetable-aholic, the bowl held congenial associations, if you find Earth Bound mixed spring lettuces and cucumber comforting.

Once the sun rose and I “filled” the bowl, she just barely fit in it, the water displaced along the line of her belly, and the WTF look spreading across her face like a second, way less satisfying dawn. Try new things with infants in the morning, right? If you can call placing someone in dishware with an inch of water in it bathing, it was successful, ish. I couldn’t tell if I was resourceful or completely useless.

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