Sturdy Purchase

The floor of showers are often the slickest place to stand. Today like many days I tried to stand perfectly still and static while in the shower. You do not need to move sometimes when the world is so rapidly cascading down about your shoulders. Its nice to not move and just let the water do the moving for you. But in that moment I can feel my toes, I can not always feel my toes but in that moment I can. Its as if the slick smooth surface of the tub is receding with some interior tide, like the sand pulling back around your ankles as you stand at low tide waiting for the next volley from the sea.
My toes begin to slip in the shower and scoot sideways. Very clearly I can feel the tub shifting under the whole of my mass, I am in motion despite myself. As if I am performing a very delicate sideways shuffle. Now here is the weird part I can feel myself drawing closer to the drain, and just for a second the instincts in my brain go against the logic and I am convinced momentarily, like most of America that I may in fact be sucked into the sewer. But than my toes flex, almost on their own, and the tiny muscles that keep me upright adjust and I regain my balance, my purchase as master of the shower. Its the smallest muscles on the bottom of my feet which take control and fix the problem, the solution from the bottom up, the head had nothing to do with it, and my big brain is just amazed that it ever thought it was headed down the drain.
That sideways shift, that slow glide on the cushion of soap across my tub can be a lovely sensation. But not always.
My muscles are working for me weather I tell them or not, my feet are doing the job with out being told, the old Melroy machine is coming back awake and pulling even with the front edge of the wave and getting ready to stand. Before you know it I might even start saying I am riding, as opposed to the current trend of treading.

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