One Christmas, we decided to go to the West Coast for the holiday. And by "we," I mean my Unit and her family. Five adults (me, my Unit, Unit's sister and brother-in-law, Unit's mother) and two small children (Unit's niece and nephew, aged 2 and 6 at the time) all sharing a small beach house on the Oregon coast. If you're thinking "That sounds like a disaster," you're right; we now refer to it as "the worst Christmas ever" (and by "we" I really mean "me").
There were a lot of things that went wrong during that week, but this is not that story. And there were
a lot of things that stressed me out when all I wanted to do was sleep, eat, knit, and relax (having just closed my sixth show of the year literally days earlier and my first year and a half of grad school), but this is only partially that story.
During our week-long holiday/vacation/forced interactions, my sister-in-law kept doing laundry (among other things). We were staying in a house, not a hotel, so we had laundry facilities and a full kitchen and other regular house-type things that we all had to share. And it seemed like she was constantly doing laundry, particularly for her two children.
Now I know kids can through a lot of clothes during the day, especially infants. But these weren't infants, so why was she constantly doing laundry? And my stressed-out-on-vacation self was all,
Who the fuck does laundry on vacation? Did you not pack enough clothing for all six days? Did you just bring dirty clothes with you? Hey, I did that a time or two in college when going home for a holiday or break.
I did not and could not understand the rationale, especially as it seemed to be one of the many things stressing her out, which in turn, stressed everyone else out.
Now let's fast-forward to six years later -- to August, 2016, to be exact. My Unit and I are just barely recovering from Treepocalypse 2016. On August 2
nd, we moved into an actual house ("temporary housing" from our insurance company), after spending weeks in both her mom's one-bedroom house and a hotel room. We walked into a new, larger house, completely furnished -- but none of the furniture (or linens or dishes or housewares or ANYTHING) was ours. A week or so after that, we were able to get the first portion of our items from the storage company, including clothes and
MY SHOES.
And somewhere in there, somewhere between moving into the house with my bags and suitcases from the hotel and getting boxes of items from the storage company, I started doing laundry. The "temporary" house included a washer and dryer, on the main level no less! No more walking up and down stairs into a possibly creepy basement for clean things. So I washed nearly everything I could. And dried it. And I happily folded things and stored them neatly in our new (to us) temporary dressers and closets and drawers.
And it dawned on me:
I know why* she was doing laundry! I finally understood.
Because when things are chaos, laundry is one thing I can control. When things are chaos, if I can at least get my clothes clean and put away, that will make me feel grounded and at home, at little less "all over the place" and a whole lot less like I'm living out of a suitcase. That one small thing is done and clean and fresh and "ready to start the day" (or week or month or whatever). The entire house (literally or metaphorically) might be a mess, but my clothes are clean and in their proper place.
I could have agency over this one part of my life.
And I've come to realize it's also why I often play tiny stupid games on the computer (in the "time management" genre): because it's one small thing I can control -- a thing I can control and often complete. They provide a wee sense of accomplishment (as does clean laundry), even if the tiny game is ultimately useless.
It only took six years, but I finally understood the miracle of laundry.
*Either that, or she really did not bring enough clothes for her kids -- fuck if I know.
