abhiiiiiii!
Ice Ice Baby
There is nothing that reinforces the isolation of the solitary life like the desperate emptiness of a laundromat on a cold, snowy winter evening. The sweet chemical smell of fabric softener and lint, the tachycardic rumble of a washer on spin cycle, the bipolar temperature…hot by the dryers, cold by the door…and the insular dark outside. It all seems designed to remind you that you are alone.
The routinized chores afterwards…the folding and hanging…you learned from your mother. This is how you fold a sheet, how you fold a towel, how you fold a shirt. Later in life, when you share laundry with a loved one, you may have to sort out a new way of folding sheets. For now, you tuck a corner under your chin just as your mother did, and you channel her hands.
After you’ve finished, you return through the dark winter night to your home, weary and chilled. You are engulfed by the scent of warm, clean laundry and a strangely pleasant lassitude. You put the laundry away, sink onto the sofa, and the loneliness of the laundromat fades. Outside the window, the snow seems far away. Everything seems far away. Tonight, alone in your freshly-laundered sheets, you’ll sleep well.
Blog photograph copyrighted to the photographer and used with permission by utata.org. All photographs used on utata.org are stored on flickr.com and are obtained via the flickr API. Text is copyrighted to the author, greg fallis and is used with permission by utata.org. Please see Show and Share Your Work
