There are certain storylines about aging relatives that we can all play out in our heads, beat for beat: Taking dad’s keys when he’s no longer safe to drive. Realizing an aging mother isn’t just forgetful, but maybe has dementia. Watching the tables turn as an older relative who bathed you as a child now needs you to bathe them. 

Comedian Atsuko Okatsuka’s comedy is full of those storylines, but she always manages to land those plots in places you’d never expect. Take the bathing an ailing relative trope: It’s usually a sad one. Not with Atsuko. When we sat down for this week’s episode, Atsuko went into detail about beginning to care for her ailing and aging grandmother, a grandmother who brought her to the States from Japan decades ago. (Did grandma actually kidnap Atsuko? Check out her new Hulu special Father to find out. It’s streaming now!) 

When Atsuko started telling me about having to give her grandmother a bath for the first time, I prepared myself for a tearjerker of a story. But I was surprised. 

Because Atsuko didn’t know what she was doing, she got into the tub with her grandmother, and because her grandmother didn’t yet understand this new reality either, she lotioned up her full body before she got in the water. 

“First I laid down, and then I was gonna have her… on top of me, yeah,” Atsuko recounted, “So I could wash her like an otter.” But… the lotion. “She was very slippery, because she had put lotion all over her body before the bath… it was like a circus. We almost died! Near concussed, two people screaming, not knowing I could kill somebody. You need skills and experience to do these things, apparently.” 

Atsuko’s husband, outside the bathroom door, hears slipping and sliding and screaming. “Do I need to call anyone? Do I need to call 911?!” he yells to Atsuko and her grandmother. “It was truly a horror film,” she told me. At this point, the obvious fix would be to have the husband come in and assist. Especially since, as Atsuko has told me and also alluded to several times over the course of her comedy special, that her husband is the domestic one. The one who gets things done around the house. In fact, Atsuko affectionately calls her husband “Mother” in the relationship, and she is “Father.”

“Why didn’t you just say to your husband [that] you’re giving Grandma a bath?” I asked Atsuko. She pauses, cracks a grin, and then lands the most unexpected punchline: “What if they cheat on me?!” 

We laugh. Almost to the point of tears, and then Atsuko reveals to me what all of her comedy is really about. “Family dynamics are not conventional. I don’t know why we ever pretend they should be.” 

Check out our full conversation on this week’s episode of the show. 

Alright, with that, can I share a recommendation? I recently DEVOURED a book I think y’all might like as well. 

The Wedding People by Alison Espach. This novel was a big bestseller last summer, but I only discovered it a few weeks ago. It pulled me in within the first two pages and then I couldn’t put it down. The book is all about a woman who plans a getaway weekend to sort some things out after some really hard life events, only to get caught up in the wedding festivities of a family she’s never met before. This book is wiser than it needs to be, and its literary references throughout function as a little education as well. I highly recommend! 

Lemme know what you’re reading/watching/listening to/loving this week! With that, have a good weekend. And don’t wear lotion into the bathtub. 

- Sam 

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