Family Showers
by Bryans_Saturdays
A few days ago our family returned from a week-long vacation in Orlando.
My mother and father-in-law own a three-bedroom time-share condo and every year on week nine, we have a Disney Land family reunion. My wife is the oldest of eleven children, many of whom still live at home, and it will be interesting to see how this tradition evolves as more kids get married and the grandchild count continues to rise. But, this time around it was a fabulous trip all around, and we are already looking forward to next year.
On Sunday morning we held a short and touching sacrament service in the condo, and then we packed up a picnic and headed for the beach. When we returned late in the evening, we were all sticky with saltwater and covered with sand, and as we piled out of the rented mini-vans, my mother in law said: “Ok, group showers for everyone!”
I know her well enough to know that she was kidding, but I also decided to seize the moment.
“That’s what we do,” I said.
“But wait… you wear your swimming suits, right?” exclaimed my thirteen-year-old sister in law.
“That would defeat the purpose of getting all the way clean,” I replied with a smile. (We had a similar conversation about a year ago, but apparently it didn’t sink home that time.
“EWWWW!” said my sixteen-year-old sister-in-law. “If I were to see my dad’s wee-wee I would absolutely FREAK OUT!”
“I saw it once on accident,” said the thirteen-year-old “and I HATED IT. I don’t ever want to see it again!”
“That’s just plain SICK that you guys all shower together,” said the sixteen-year-old.
“Actually, it’s very healthy,” said my mother-in-law. I was shocked. Had I heard her correctly? “When I got married” she continued “I had never seen one before. Tampons were this big” she made a small circle with her fingers, “and my new husband was THIS big” she made a much bigger circle. “I was scared to death of that thing!”
I was impressed that she would mention tampons and sex so freely in front of her girls, and I was also amused that this was the reason she thought it was healthy for my daughter to see me naked.
“Does your daughter see you that way often?” my mother-in-law asked me.
“I would say probably on a daily basis.. or at least close to it” I replied.
“What about modesty? How does that figure in?”
“Modesty” I replied, “I think has much more to do with a person's state of mind then the clothing they are wearing. Of course, it’s important to dress modestly, but that does not mean that being undressed automatically implies a lack of modesty.”
I could see in her eyes that she was listening and processing what I was saying. I honestly expected some sort of mild argument or protest, but there was none. She just listened, then nodded when I was done.
Later that night when my wife and I were in bed and all was quiet, she told me about a short conversation that had occurred when I was not around. The two sisters (thirteen and sixteen) had confronted my seven-year-old daughter.
“Hey [name], is it true that you see your dad's wee-wee almost every day?”
“Huh?” my daughter replied.
“His wee-wee! Do you really see him naked all the time?”
“Yea. So what?”
“And you see his… thingy?”
“You mean his PENIS?” she said the last word very slowly, apparently irked at their refusal to use the proper word.
“Right. You actually see it?”
This time she didn’t reply. She simply gave them a blank, confused stare and walked away.
My wife concluded the short recap by saying that our daughter simply was not able to make any sense of their curiosity or fascination.
And that is exactly what we had in mind when we decided to raise our kids in a “no-closed door” family
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