Why am I writing about laundry? Because it’s something I do regularly and redeeming it, making it meaningful,  is something I’d like to happen. Bottom line: I’d like to like what I do.

I like the smell of the clothes when they come out of the wash. I use a natural detergent that makes them smell of just plain clean and nothing else. When I open the washing machine door and get that first whiff, it is satisfying. Things that were smelly, greasy, dirty and stained are transformed. Yes, they’re the same old clothes, socks, underwear and T-shirts but they get new life. I’m the same old me but at each birthday, I am given a new year.

I like the jumble of colors the clothes make. It’s like your child’s first colored drawing. “This is a house, Mommy, and can you see the tree beside it? And that’s you! And this is the garden. See all the pink roses and red carnations?” And you nod and smile and hug her close, seeing only brown and green and a stick with a round black head and pinks and reds. The colors have run together but its’ beautiful!

I like the colors but I do not like the jumble. Like when I pull the leg of my son’s jeans out and find it’s caught In the sleeve of my husband’s long-sleeved shirt which is caught in my dress! I used to tug and pull, but no more. You’ve got to gently extricate the outermost twist to get to the main knot. We get entangled in beautiful things. A bonus, sometimes we even say, it is a must. Until it becomes a headache, a heartache. A burden and the knot gets tighter and tighter.

I like shaking the clothes out, seeing the creases disappear, well some of them anyway. I think, “Great! Maybe I won’t have to iron this one.” I put a grey, faded, shapeless sweatshirt with 2 buttons lacking against my nose and remember the first time I put it on. It didn’t look so old then and I think it still had all its buttons. 25 years ago, my then young husband would come home, take off his work clothes, put on a t-shirt and jeans and the “Grand Méchant Look” sweatshirt.  Until he came home one day and I was wearing it! He smiled, took me in his arms and held me there. For a long while. I’ve been wearing it to this day. It’s like my second skin.

Memories are in the wash. Thank God they don’t run off with the dirty water. They come back with a new zing. The sweatshirt may be as faded as a cataract-covered eye but the heart still beats to that smile, that cherished embrace.