When my second child was two months old, I wrote: “When I write my autobiography, which is tentatively titled, There is Never Not Laundry, the Camille Henderson Story, I am thinking I will call this chapter, “When Will my Baby Grow Eyebrows and Other Things I Have Googled.” I was saying, “There is a lot to do, and there always is. I am anxious about it and not sure what doing it right should feel like.” I was talking about literal laundry and all of the other have-to stuff in life. At the time, I was saying, in my weirdo way, that I was feeling ill-equipped and frantic about superfluous things because life felt out of control.
Reflecting on that time, that feels like a fair summary of the situation.The internet is great for this. You can perform a quick search for things you dimly recall and then there are, just as you left them. I had infant who never slept, dear God, and a four-year-old. I had just gone back to work full time. I only kind of remember these months. I remember the way my bones felt. When I needed a name for this blog, this little bubble from 2014 burst back into my awareness. I love the idea that I was talking to myself from five years ago.
I am a metaphor person. I am a pattern person. I was talking about more than literal laundry. There was a reason I chose this as the title for my autobiography, even if it was off the cuff. Laundry stands in for something bigger because laundry is irresistibly universal. There is a humanity in the chore of our literal laundry and the way we wash it. No one is upset about the fact of laundry. Most people respect the need to make time for it and understand how overwhelming ceaseless piles of laundry can be. It is a good idea for most people to learn to do their own, but we tend to do it the way we were taught and we may get results we like better if we’re willing to try something else. Laundry needs to be done, and done consistently. If we did nothing but laundry we would be really unfun people. There are so many places to wear your clean clothes. That’s why we’re washing them!
Everyone knows what is meant by figurative dirty laundry. It is the stuff you aren’t supposed to talk about, but everyone experiences. In this analogy there is an implication that we should not be making our human struggles public, but also an acknowledgement that everyone struggles. But this is a metaphorical laundromat. These are the things I want to talk about.
I’d rather it not be all about me, though I will happily offer up my laundry. I know I’m not the only one that has laundry to do and I want to have a good time while we do it together. There’s a lot of downtime at the laundromat. Maybe we need a bar up in here too. Maybe we need some yoga classes and a lending library. I don’t know yet. Let’s see what people bring if they show up! Maybe you want to hang out for a while before you truck in your laundry. Maybe you want to look in the window. However you want to hang out at the laundromat is fine with me. I’m glad you’re here! Hi!
Friends, write something! I would love for you to share it with me here! If I know you, in real life, on the internet, from a long time ago, I am inviting you to work through something at my laundromat. Writing is a powerful way to clarify thoughts for me and has been really helpful in convincing myself of the value of my opinion. When I read me back to me, I make a lot of sense. I can be nice to that person because her brain is now outside of my brain.
I cannot stop names from popping into my brain when I think of the people I know and the things they might want to talk about. I know people who are handling some epic things. The laundry of life is endless. I have friends who know a lot about aging parents, balancing work and life, staying home with kids, chronic illness, sexuality, disability, drug addiction, mental health and so many other things I haven’t considered. We all have relationship and identity issues big and small. We could all benefit from listening to ourselves about our own experiences and working through the things that get dirty so that they do not pile up.
You pick your topic and your format. I do not care what you write about. I may have you filed in my brain as someone who might want to talk about something I know about you. If that’s not what you want to talk about, I would love to know what is. Write about what you are paying attention to. What are you noticing? What do you wish you knew a long time ago? What’s been tough for you? What lights you up? What makes you angry and why? Where is your laundry piling up and what are you doing about it?
The parameters I am laying out are the ones I am attempting in my own writing and I have put them there to keep me comfortable in my message and to protect people that I love from hearing criticism or defensiveness from me or anyone else where there really isn’t any.
This is not an advice column. There is no “you should” here. There is only: this is what is true for me. I don’t know what other people should do. I’m not them. I love you, but I’m here to tell you, you don’t either. We’re not picking through each other’s piles to decide how we would sort it or prescribe the right kind of washing regimen, but we can lend each other some supplies if it seems useful. We are doing our own laundry.
This is not the laundry olympics. You don’t have to have the biggest pile of the dirtiest laundry to need to wash it, and if you have a metric fuckton of rank laundry, you are also in the right place. We can all have a good time at the laundromat no matter what we have going on in the machine. The more I think about it, the more we are for sure going to need a bar.
There is also no apologizing. One of the reasons I appreciate communicating in writing is that it takes me about four passes through my own writing to get rid of things that sound defensive. I don’t catch it all. Share to your own level of comfort. You don’t have to air all of your dirty laundry. Explain yourself as completely as you would like, but don’t justify your perspective because you think someone else might not like it. I will buy you a beer and we will talk back to the internet trolls or the jerks in town together and mostly offline, if ever we are so lucky to be graced with such an issue. I know this could be hard for me too. Maybe that’s one reason I don’t want to do it quite alone. I am not tapping special friends on the forehead because I know this is not something everyone is going to want to do, right now or ever. I get that.
Take your time! One big struggle for me is trying to say four things at once. I often have the experience that, “oh, this is THAT thought, but better.” “These things are connected THIS way.” “Now I see I have to back up and talk about X before I can talk about Y.” Ideas are exciting, and I miss connections when I go too fast! What keeps coming back around? Where is your laundry piling up? Take time and pay attention.
I understand that it takes a while for word to get out about a new place, so I know that I may very well be doing some lonely laundry. The vulnerability makes me want to puke, but the laundry needed done anyway. My metaphorical laundromat is for you if you think it is. It is not for you if you don’t. I hope you will decide to hang out. I’d make it rain quarters, but I don’t think projectiles put out quite the welcoming vibe I’m hoping for. Welcome to There is Never Not Laundry! I hope you will find something useful here.
