Bathing al fresco by the light of the moon was a necessity in the mid ’90s. Having a total hysterectomy caused me to wake up from anesthesia with complete menopausal symptoms on top of the surgical pain. I struggled for the next seven years till we finally got my estrogen level up to something I could live with. I had hot flashes that sat at a ten on the Richter Scale and no one wanted to be anywhere near me. I didn’t blame them…I didn’t want to be near them either. It was miserable.

I brought my children home for visits with the family every single summer. If you have ever suffered through August in West Virginia, you’ll have some idea what Dante’s Inferno was all about. With the heat and humidity, one could not begin to imagine running a bath or taking anything but a cold shower. I’m not sure how it began, but along about the time my youngest was three or four years old, we started taking “Moon Baths”. Where that tub sits in this picture, there used to be a 50 gallon drum to catch the rainwater. A few years ago, it didn’t get emptied in the fall and when it froze, the bottom busted out of it. Since then, there’s been a galvanized tub strategically placed at either corner of the bathroom addition to catch the rain.

One night back in the mid ’90s, I was so sticky hot and Daughter #2 had just about had it with the whole “let’s go visit grandma and watch eggs fry on the sidewalk” thing. I was carrying groceries in the back door when I looked over and saw that cool water in the water barrel and all I wanted to do was drop everything and stick my head in it. As soon as it was dark enough and everyone had turned in for the night, my Little and I grabbed a bucket of warm water from the bathroom and carried it outside. She looked at me with some trepidation. I smiled and said, “Trust me!” We gathered bar soap, shampoo, wash cloths, towels and clean night clothes and headed for the backyard. I explained, with great authority, that we were about to take our very first “Moon Bath”. I stripped down to my all-together and Little happily followed suit. We soaped up with the warm, sudsy water from the bucket, lathered our hair, then took that enamel saucepan off the nail and dipped fresh, cool rainwater over us to rinse off. We squealed with delight at the shock of water that felt so cold at first but soon felt perfect as we acclimated. Squeaky clean and refreshed, we dried off and dressed for bed. It became a nightly ritual and I think we continued to do that every visit till Little got too big.

My time in West Virginia now is opposite of what it used to be. I spend my summers in the rather temperate climate (comparatively) of Colorado. It is semi-arid there and a shower indoors is not a bad thing. But, should I spend any hot August nights here again, you can rest assured I’ll be bathing in the moonlight at the corner of “ooooh” and “aaaah”! ❤️

“Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree,”
‭‭Genesis‬ ‭18:4‬ ‭ESV‬‬