The Way We Live Now--The Laundry

It was in Paris, a long time ago.  I was taking a group of students on an exploration of the city.  We were staying in what seemed to be an ancient building with residences on one side and hotel rooms opposite surrounding an air shaft that ran up the center of the four-story, square building.  I could sit on my bed, look out the window, and see into the rooms directly across the air shaft.  Because it was hot and humid that July, everyone had their windows open, curtains fluttering in the light breeze.

One afternoon, taking a break in my room, I saw a ghostly figure in the apartment across from me moving passed her open windows.  She was elderly, maybe in her 70s, and she had a thin rope stretched through her tiny kitchen and into her living room.  She was doing her laundry in the kitchen sink and after wringing out each item of its excess water, she would drape the garment over the white line.

It was to this image that I returned during our national isolation due to COVID-19.  We do not have laundry facilities and our local laundromat did not seem safe enough or sanitary, and the fluff and fold service would mean having to go into the place to drop it off.  So we, like the old woman in Paris, decided to wash it ourselves at home and then hang it to dry throughout every room in the house.  We would try to assist the drying with strategically placed fans.

The process was slow, and took a week to do a few loads, but the soft spring breeze wafting room to room had a sweetness and light to it that made us feel the change of seasons.  There is nothing like the smell of freshly washed laundry.

It is amazing how this dangerous and deadly pandemic has made us rethink the ordinary and mundane.  We are forced to be creative, to return to ways we utilized before the conveniences of modern existence.  We are forced by necessity to return to and reflect on the things we have taken for granted, the commonplace, the daily chores of our lives.

This is a haunted time, of empty streets, closed shops and restaurants, of sirens continually screaming in the distance, the soundtrack of the way we live now.  We cycle through new rituals and new routines, cut off from the world and those we love.  So we seek comfort in the little things, baking, cooking, making art, and in this case, fresh laundry drying in our rooms, scented with the perfume of spring, and floating like shrouds in the gentle air from open windows, beautiful in its simplicity.