Shower, Commando Style

At sunset, Halloween, I return from an evening run and enjoy the outdoor shower overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. I recollect other Halloween's. This is the first one that I have not spent with my daughter who is now thirteen. I am getting old, I think. I remember the Halloween with a friend and his young daughter, driving through the suburbs, house to house and way beyond the neighborhood on a cold and rainy night. She is out of college now. I remember several evenings on Hawley Mountain with the obsessive, eccentric Stewart Mott and his increasingly intense Halloweens there. It was always the final stop of our evening. We could sit by a fire, faces burning, backs cold. down below, on the poorer end of Waccabuc, the streets would be filled with kids and the sight and smell of menthol shaving cream. Tonight, I hope no one will drive down this long drive; if they do, all they will get is an apple, because that's all there is to give.

I shower exposed to anyone who might happen to be walking down the right of way path to the river. As far as I know, no one has been watching. And tonight, at sunset this Halloween eve, it is even less likely that someone will happen by. My daughter's friends refer to my showers as "commando style." They are too self-conscious to take their bathing suits off when they return from the beach. I guess they may have been spying on this middle-aged dad. Should I be flattered? I suppose I should. "Commando style!" I find this amusing.

Within a few days I'll be shutting the house down, disconnecting the water for winter, blowing the water through the copper plumbing with a compressor so that it will not freeze over the winter. The shower has been the hit of the summer, supplanting the indoor baths and its indoor shower counterpart. It is so grand, washing outdoors with an amazing view across meadows to the sea as the sun goes down. Maybe I'll be lucky and this summerlike interlude will continue for a few more days, so that I can be a commando in the evenings, one more time!