Ice Storm Octavia

I can’t say I live for housework but I like the results so I make sure my house stays tidy. Since the girls are on their own now my housework has gone way down – they never helped much anyway. One particular place my work load has lessened is the laundry. Alexandra loved changing clothes and her weekly wash equaled all the rest of ours combined.

The last few years I have found laundry to be my favorite chore. When life gets chaotic and there is a lot of stress, doing laundry becomes a mediation. I can only fold or hang one thing at a time and those warm clean piles of sorted clothes makes me feel that there is some order in my life.

Everyday this winter I have watched my father’s health decline and each day I’m not sure what I’m facing. So sometimes I take refuge in bringing order to one corner of my life that I can control. Those neatly hung shirts and pants are something that makes me feel ready for whatever life throws at me that day.

When I’ve been on a big pilgrimage, the first few days of reentry can be tough. I miss the excitement of the adventure and jet lag has set in. I usual find myself wandering the aisles of the grocery store in a stupor wondering how I could be on a different continent the day before and pushing a cart in such a familiar place the next. After each trip I come back to the laundry, the mundane activity that brings order back from chaos and makes everyday life grounded again.

This last week winter storm Octavia took me back in time a hundred and fifty years to when my home was young. For two days I kept warm by the fire and read by a kerosene lamp. Those few days without modern conveniences reminded me how grateful that I don’t have to wash clothes in a big pot over a fire in the yard or hang out each garment by hand. A few days later my washer and dryer were humming away making quick work of a formally arduous task.

Over the last few years I come back to one of the my favorite books, After the Ecstasy, Then the Laundry by Jack Kornfield. Each time I read this book I get a deeper understanding of what it means to lead a spiritual life. We love those times on the mountain top but we can’t stay there, we have to come down to the valley and take care of the laundry. We have to take our experiences and use them enhance our daily lives. We have to take the highs of the mystical, the sorrows of the world and mix them with ordinary life and make them all equal, all part of being human.

After the Ecstasy, The Laundry  by Jack Kornfield

Hand Wash Cold:  Care instructions for an Ordinary Life   by Karen Maezen Miller