I couldn’t wait for Jim to return home from his morning run, to show him what I had discovered.

While blow drying my hair, with my head upside down, I glanced into our shower, and there it was.  As plain as day.  In one of the tiles in shower, a puppy’s face, staring back at me.  Even in the tan stone, I could tell it was black and white.  Black around the eyes, with a white stripe from the top of its slightly cocked head.  Unmistakably a puppy.  It looked a lot like the black and white Springer Spaniel, Teddy, I had in my thirties (pictured above).  I looked away, then looked back again, thinking maybe the blood rushing to my head, my head being upside down and all, might have caused me to hallucinate.  But no, it was still there.

When Jim returned, I said, “Hey, there’s something I want to show you in the shower.”  I suspect he thought it was something he would need to fix; he’s our resident handyman.  I asked him to stand precisely where I had been standing and invert his head.  To his credit, he followed along without questioning or making any snide remarks.  I said, “Look to your left, in the shower.  What do you see?”  I was seriously curious to see if he would see what I had seen.

“It’s a dog!” he exclaimed.  I was thrilled.

He remarked that now we have another dog, since we lost our Corgi, Trixie, about a month ago.  We laughed that this new dog won’t shed or pee on the patio.  Then Jim said, “Have you seen the spooky face in the shower?”  So we both stood, fully clothed, in our shower and proceeded to point out faces and images that we had each seen in our shower and even in the tile surrounding our adjacent bath tub. 

Afterwards, I reflected on how funny it was that we had both been “seeing things” in our bathroom since we moved in five years ago but had never mentioned them to each other.

I don’t think this exchange would have occurred even four months ago.  I was too wrapped up in my work world to see anything in my environment.  But I’ve taken advantage of this transition from full-time to self-employment to stop, look and listen.  To just be.  To breathe.  Stretch.  Engage in conversations and in silent contemplation.  To see things that are always there, if we open our eyes to them.

It’s shared experiences, like this one, that bring people, in this case my husband and me, closer together.  I am thankful for the opportunity to begin to see the world through new eyes.