Laundry
The first time I went to his house, he showed me the backyard and the laundry hanging from rope lines tied between tree trunks. He took a picture of me standing among the sheets or shirts or tablecloths. I can’t recall. But never mind, the point is I had let a stranger, albeit a dark, handsome Italian one persuade me to meet him after dinner. He found me when I was walking from my hotel near St. Mark’s to a trattoria.
On my own, traveling for several months, while my son’s father was trying to decide if he was going to stay in my life long enough so I could become a mother. Which of course I eventually did. And he eventually did. But never mind, this is about the Italian and his laundry and the extra time I spent in Venice so we could have lots of sex and eat the meals he cooked for me.
He hardly spoke English as I used the Italian I was determined to perfect. Never mind about the Italian, I never minded that there wasn’t much talking. But then he got angry that I wasn’t always available, that I had a journey to continue. That staying an extra week was not enough. I don’t remember how we said good-bye.
Laundry, hanging and blowing and moving as if choreographed, is framed in every photograph I have taken over many years of travel. In Madagascar, Croatia, Portugal, Peru. Where is there no laundry? I taught Nico to do his own laundry when he was young. I probably didn’t emphasize enough the importance of flossing. But laundry was a game changer. He did his own throughout high school. The principal was impressed and said such a talent would make him very popular at college.
I am not sure how much laundry he did as a college freshman, living in the dorm and too distracted to separate the whites. Today, in sobriety and sanity, he still calls to ask how to remove a particular stain. What exactly determines the choice of a gentle cycle or using cold water instead of warm? Rarely, I caution, should he use hot.
I had a dance solo years ago. A duet with laundry. I swiped at the air with a sheet. I flung articles of clothing as if possessed. It was exhausting and cathartic. As if the laundry represented parts of myself or my life that needed to be exorcised. I am not sure why Mary gave me that solo in the piece she called, “Life Can Never Be Too Pink.” We moved across the stage wearing 50’s house dresses. The choreography was reminiscent of a time before the feminist era we all then occupied.
There was the Italian seduction and teaching Nico the finer points and now there is the laundry which ties me to the present. It simplifies and frames this time. Long ago I agreed to become, once again, a wife. The affairs and flings with foreign men, unattainable men and others have ended. Never mind my storied past. Now there is the laundry I choose to do.
Separating the whites, putting my underwear in mesh bags, treating the remnants of food with one or another of the array of stain removers Robert has accumulated is reassuring, The repetition, several times a week, reassures me that I am present. A tangible sign of life when all around there is war and Covid and the multitude of threats to take away what I probably took for granted.
Never mind. I don’t intend to enter the political fray and my anger about not being able to choose. This is about laundry and its constancy which inscribes me in the continuing book of life.