Laundry is the solution

Remember when I related the story of the mother of my very dear friend warning me that no one said life was going to be easy?
Well, my life is in one of those not-so-easy phases at the moment.
Having said that, there is something about doing laundry that brings life into focus; easing the weight of the struggles.
And it seems then, while I sort clothes as to colours or lack thereof, and level of dirtiness, while warning the socks with my firm voice not to wander off to seek their own fame and fortune (to stay together for heaven’s sake and employ the buddy system), my life makes sense.
I’m currently trying to ready my deck for repainting—a job that sounds manageable at first reading, with just a bit of scraping and operating a pressure washer that could launch the space shuttle while blowing bits of paint into the next county.
But this entry on my to-do list has drained my energy and cheery disposition, and as I stand and stare at the deck that I’d like to take a sledgehammer to (or a tiger-torch), I feel myself being depleted.
What will I do? How will I get through this? Solution: I will do laundry.
There’s a solution to every challenge, and laundry is my solution to most of the struggles I collide with. I may have to pull perfectly clean clothes out of my closet to add to the pile to be sure my energy banks are adequately restored.
Mother Nature has promised five or six days of rain, which does play havoc with my plans to hang my laundry on my clothesline, but we need the rain so I don’t mind adjusting my approach.
Well, I mind, but I’m trying hard not to in light of my dead and dying lawn. After all, the clothesline is an integral part of the laundry process; not to be given up on without a fight.
The rain may be intermittent, in which case I could employ the clothesline in an on-and-off manner.
When my mother was lost in the fog of Alzheimer’s, she did laundry and oftentimes it was the same small load of delicate whites (it should be noted my mother had laundry skills that surpassed superhuman status—no stain stopped her and her whites quite simply glistened).
When nothing in her memory made sense, laundry did. And watching her gently hang her whites on a drying rack, after giving them a bit of time to bounce and tumble around in the dryer, brought her closer to me.
My mother folded clothes perfectly, had mastered the fitted sheet early on in the game, and she tucked her love into each T-shirt she folded, each towel, and even the underwear.
I knew she was still present while she did laundry, was still with me, and the task of laundry in those moments defined her; made her feel at peace, relaxed, having value and purpose.
And so each time I fold my sheets as precisely as I possibly can, my mother is in the room with me, saying in her signature way, “Cheer up. Things could be worse.”
wendistewart@live.ca