A reflection between laundry loads
and knowing our essential-ness.
She said, write a moment in you have recently experienced in your life - like a scene of a play or film and you are the character. Go see what happens when you write as the observer.
And so I did.
____
Haphazardly balanced in her outstretched arms, the clothes tumbled from the oversized bucket into the wide open mouth of the washing machine. No separation, all together now for child one’s laundry. The wool socks with animals printed on them dance in a free fall with the black sweater with the yellow and white flowers on it. As if the gates of the pool have just opened for Summer, the clothes rush in to the wet, rinse, spin, repeat.
The lid clothes and off the mother goes to tend to her work day while the first load washes along. A queen of multi-tasking, it feels so un-royal though.
The slightest of clicks announces the unlock of the lid, like an alarm clock to rouse you from a deep sleep but it is a task you are immersed in. Uninterrupted work much less uninterrupted dream cycles feel far away these days, so many alarms. So the queen is summoned back to her post and she lifts the lid to see all the clothes intermingled with with one another. Some are stuck to the sides of the inner wall of the washing machine while others have already fallen down to the bottom, forlorn that their pool time is done. She reaches for a handful of clothes and transfer them to the dryer.
Reach.
Repeat.
Reach.
Repeat.
The socks are the most stubborn of them all, continued to dive back in while begging to stay longer. She nabs them all up in a final reach and goes to closes the dryer door. Ahh wait, she sees a sleeve of the black sweater with the yellow and white flowers peeking out of a lover’s embrace with a pair of tan pants. Plucking it from a tangled mess, it is then flat laid on the kitchen table. A quick tumble on high heat and that sweater would soon be passed down to child two much before its time and to the utter dismay of child one. She sets the timer and presses start as the machine whirls to life.
The mother walks past her office that houses her computer atop her messy desk. Not yet, she thinks as she ascends the stairs seeking another oversized bucket for child two. Daydreams of a laundry shoot she sees once a year in the first Home Alone film appear in her mind. She scoffs that her imagination even touches the inner conversation of a laundry shoot - how mundane, so domestic. So she reaches for another daydream, as if running her hands along the spines of shelved books upon books upon books, she relishes in the choices of her own inner thought library. She lingers over the bookstore owner dream with the blue couch and welcome mat. Jumping up a shelf, she soft smiles at the fantasy section inspired by her romantasy reads as of late. What if she was in a secret guild and could wield a dagger with an amethyst on the hilt? Ride a dragon? And have sex in the middle of the day as so many of these romance characters do on a whim. Her eye is then caught on the vacation book and warm sunshine. After a longer Winter, an upcoming trip to Florida feels necessary with a sun that mimics that of her youth in Texas. Different choices than a laundry shoot dream…
Alas, the to do list beckons and she grabs child two’s overflowing bucket. “Why”, she utters aloud and again, “why and how is this one always so full every single time?”. She sets the bucket down and rummages through the clothes as her hand grazes an actual hanger in its midst. She pulls at the hanger and a dress still hangs on the corners, clean and only barely wrinkled. Three more dresses follow that were not once worn this week and the bucket still overflows. She jots down a mental note to speak to her second about wasting water, the rules of laundry, clean clothes and how many times one can re-wear pjs in a row. And another note, to gently ask if these dresses still align with her style, the second is very particular and the mother so loves that about her. She chortles as her mental notes always tend to get lengthy…
Down the steps she goes. The too large bucket now tipping into the wide open mouth of the washing machine, as suspected, this one is going to be two loads for child two. But what about all the water?
The clothes swim and dance once placed in the machine. She wishes they would dance themselves right into the dryer but she knows she is essential here. This is part of her essential-ness, she thinks to herself and grimaces. Is that true?
“Well darling, what would you want your essential-ness to be, if not laundry?'“, a snarky voices asks?
She wheels around wishing she had that amethyst encrusted dagger, “I will tell you about essential” as she rolls her shoulders and postures her spine to no one but herself. She pauses though as the words seem far away and the pause feels heavy, too heavy.
Her heel begins to turn to close the washing machine lid again. To repeat the cycle but she turns back and she speaks aloud:
I am essential here
I choose to exist within the mundane
and the magic
I create life in the complex-est of ways
And I curate community.
I am the protector of emotions
suppressed and expressed
and I will not yield
To the belief that I am a sniff of one note.
Watch me cycle in this life
Through follicular, ovulation, luteal and menstrual, repeat
just like laundry.
I am intrinsically connected to the moon
just like the ocean.
Find me swimming and dancing with no separation,
all together.
I am the complex-est
and
I am held within the circles of women
in my ancestry, in my earthly past, in this present and out there in the future
gripping the vulnerability of stubborn hope.
All while the eclectic grapevines of poetry, exuberance and sensuality
weave with and beyond the chaos
reminding me, you, us that we are so alive
enmeshed in the flash decision we made
to come
here
now.
And then, all that is essential and all of me
remains.
.
.
.
And with that, she breathes a deep breath in and out. She turns on her heels once again and she slams the lid to the washing machine closed and presses start with what would seem is the hilt of a dagger. She moves with purpose to her next purpose
because
she
is
one.