As I write this story I realize that this is the third tale I have posted about soap. I don’t know what that means but it seemed worth mentioning.
For as long as I can remember my husband and I have used Lever soap. Recently I have felt that it was not doing the job it once had and I told Mister Rain that I would like us to buy something different.
I was very close to my nana, my mom’s mom, spending several weeks each summer with her at her home in Philadelphia. My PopPop died when I was 8, sadly I don’t remember him very well. Nana, though, she was my gal. When I think of her house I immediately smell freshly baked cookies or Apple Brown Betty. That is until I mentally walk the footprint of her home, moving from room to room, stopping in her bathroom. Here I am met with the scent of Dove soap.
In present day, now that the time had come to change brands I chose Dove. Putting groceries away, I opened the pack of bars, stacking them in the bathroom closet. When we ran out of Lever I opened the first Dove soap, my husband and I both commenting on the fact that the shape of the bar was no longer curved as Dove once was nor did it have its undeniable fragrance. Products are always changing without an apparent reason, therefore, neither of us thought anything of it.
While running my bath water several months later I retrieved a new bar of soap to replace the existing sliver, unwrapping and placing it on the shower shelf. This was the third bar of Dove we had used since making the switch from Lever.
As I reached for the soap a bit later my thumb felt the indentation on the top of the bar that I had not paid attention to previously. Running my pointer finger over each line, recognizing they were letters, I squinted futilely to see what it said. I could not tell but it did not seem to be “DOVE.”
I had been reading an ebook on my iPad while soaking, so I Googled “what does it say on a bar of Dove soap?,” confirming it still says “DOVE.” So what the rubber duck had we been washing ourselves with since we stopped using Lever? Feeling the embossed design once again, I slowly traced out the letters:
I – V – O – R – Y
Totally confused, I Googled for the second time, asking if Dove soap is made by Ivory. It is not. Mister Rain had bought Ivory soap instead of Dove.
When he came up to bed later that night I was waiting. I carefully weaved my web, recounting the story once again of the aroma of Dove soap and its direct connection to my beloved nana. I then asked him to look at the new bar of soap that I had put in the shower and then tell me what it said.
The bathroom is mere steps from our bedroom yet it took a long time for him to return.
“I bought Ivory soap,” he said sheepishly.
“Yes, you did,” I replied, unable to hide my glee. Even if you frequently visit Sister Rain, you still have no idea the mileage I can get out of something like this.
“Huh, I wonder how I did that?,” he rhetorically asked himself out loud.
As I write this my husband sits nearby putting together a Costco list. He just told me that they have Dove bars on sale. “The ice cream or the soap?,” I asked.
“The soap,” he clarified.
The non visually impaired spouse in this marriage couldn’t see that he had purchased the wrong soap, even after he had used it for a dozen weeks. But somehow his sudsy sense told him that at that very moment I was writing our soap opera.
#sisterrain #alittlesightalotofheart #legallyblindwriter #writer#writersofinstagram #humaninterest #life #lifeisgood #lifestories #marriage #anivoryshowermarrytale
