Zen and the art of laundry

Choices by the fascist regime now in charge of the USA have me leaning on my coping mechanisms more than usual. I’m refilling on too many cups of hot tea and you can most often find me in my slippers saying, “Oh, dear,” to no one, like a ninety year old. I may also be heard to mutter, “Motherfucking Nazis. God damn,” while laughing like a hysteric at a funeral.

This is my face reading the news every day now.

May we all find solace in the tiny slivers of calm between the cresting waves of bullshit.

I cope with the craziness of life by making inappropriate jokes about everything. I learned last week I am not the best person to have at a candlelight vigil.

May we all find solace in the tiny slivers of calm between the cresting waves of bullshit.

Zen and the art of laundry:

We go to the gym. My man and I both go to the gym a lot. My mom tried to teach me that “ladies perspire, they don’t sweat,” but I sweat like a hog and so does he. We also have two children and a cat and among the five of us generate a heap of laundry every day.

I have three bins. Two get filled with dirties and one fills up with clean laundry. This one tucked away in the bathroom gets the foulest gym clothes. I’m regularly disinfecting this area.

A bin like the one below lives in between the bedrooms and takes all the other laundry, particularly the kids’ clothes. And then the one in the living room fills up with the clean clothes we haven’t put away yet. It gets put away when guests come over. Sometimes.

When we return from the gym in the morning all the laundry goes into the washer. When we return from work at night all of the laundry goes in the dryer.

The moment of Zen happens in our modest laundry room. I like to run the dryer so the cycle will end when I am home. I will spend several deliberate minutes pulling items from the dryer and turning them right side out and matching up sock pairs as I drop every clean item into the empty laundry bin. I notice the heat from the dryer warming my hands; I notice every piece of the children’s clothing, how their bodies are small and growing, how the knees are worn from antics; I think about my man’s gym shirts and his work shirts and all of his silent effort; I look at my gym gear and pat myself on the back for the work I put into building my strength; I consider the resources required to run these machines of modern convenience and take pains to appreciate this immense luxury.

In my laundry moments I give thanks for what I have and I think about people sleeping rough in my city, people coping with cold and wet weather as they try to exist, people living in other nations who are worried about warfare at their doorstep.

I recognize this moment of Zen is a form of meditation or even prayer. Cultures have different words for it. In modern therapy-speak we’d say I’m grounding myself in the moment and practicing mindfulness.

A mental health ritual seems stupid to me unless it’s attached to a practical chore. Laundry forces me to do it.

A moment when I brush the cat and clip his claws and listen to him purr.

A moment when I take the kids for flu vaccinations and give thanks to modern medicine for lowering their probability of premature death.

A moment when I stub my toe and feel a wave of immense pain that reminds me I am alive and corporeal and this is likely the worst pain I will experience this week and therefore I am lucky.

I don’t fold laundry; there are limits. Our eldest sorts it into piles and we all put away our own clothes. I usually just shove it all in a drawer and the kids do the same with theirs. I do not have all the time in the world for laundry. I do not have all the time in the world.

May you find solace in the slivers of calm between the cresting waves of bullshit.

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