The Laundry Room Symphony

I was just checking a load of laundry downstairs- putting a lavender softener in with some baby blue sheets in the dryer, and letting a duvet soak in the washer- when all of a sudden:

I was five or six years old. My back was against the dryer in the laundry room at home in Monroeville, and my eyes were closed as I listened to the hum of thuds, and clanks, and tap, taps just behind the dryer door. It was the clanking and the thuds that made the metal door vibrate against my back. My mom was ironing my dad’s plaid shirt, and my brothers navy Tommy shirt, and my umbros. She chatted to herself, the hum of her voice as constant as the dryer’s. I opened the door, momentarily forgetting the feeling on my back, and took out several warm towels, and wrapped them around my shoulders and knees, still trying to sleep.  I sat on a hill of t-shirts, and towels, and linens; my foot on a sock, my hand on one of my dad’s t-shirts that had an airplane diving from the left pocket stright to the bottom hem.

 My mom was asking me to go get ready, to brush my hair, to get my socks and shoes on. But I was limp against the dryer, so heavy with sleep, and warm, and the smell of Tide detergent that I fell over just like a sock would.

I was just a sock on a stack of clothes, and I smelled like mountain breeze along with all the other threads and stitches. We were all sleepy and heavy, and obviously without any limbs in which we could put on socks or shoes or brush our hair. We wanted to sleep, to close our eyes in the darkness of the cabinets, and the drawers, and the closets in the house.

“Clink, Clink” My mom’s bracelets said, as she moved the iron back and forth. “Clink, Clink.” I heard them over and over, their tiny voices small, but resonant. They mixed with the humming laughter of the drying machine: its big belly rolling, and rolling, and rolling on my back.

“Shhh,” the iron said. “Shhhh, Shhh, Shhhh,” it said, as my mom steamed and steamed and steamed the creases and wrinkles out of my dad’s trousers. Where wrinkles were concerned, mercy was not. The iron may be an appliance in some people's homes, but it was a cruel weapon -at least if you were a wrinkle- in mine.

I opened one eye to watch her back. Back and forth she’d move with her arm. And her arm moved with the iron- that dictator of the laundry room whose hot face and fiery mouth could suppress those endless wrinkles. All the while, she was going over the grocery list in her mind, and out loud. And at the end of that list, she would begin another: things to do at work, people to visit after work, people to take food to, people she had met here and there, things to take to Granny and Bigdaddy, and of course, the most important of all, what we would be having for dinner than night:

Butter beans, corn, and okra from  Bigdaddy’s garden, meat loaf, and corn bread. And sweet tea that was so sweet, it was like syrupt.

List after list, like a morning bird chatting to the rising sun, she chirped and chirped to me, or maybe to the air, or maybe to herself. My eyes closed again, and I listened to her mind hard at work, chirping with the “shhh” of the iron, and the “mmmm” of the dryer’s belly, and the “clink” of her bracelets. And I was content, sleepy, but content.

I would do this every morning. Like a ritual, it was my snooze button. For years I would sit- my back against the warm dryer- on a stack of clothes. And I would listen to the music of the laundry room.

I don’t remember the last time I sat with her, maybe I was twelve or so. Sitting on the floor in front of the dryer was no longer practical about the time I realized that washing my hair in the morning was necessary, additional to attempting to do something with the tangled mess on top of my head.

But even so, just now, after having just leaned over the dryer, and feeling its warmth, I thought of her, my mom I mean. I thought of her, and the smell, and the sounds of the laundry room. And I remembered, like I so often do, a season in my life that was so sweet and good.

She always says, “We’re making a memory,” but she’s right when she says, “you don’t really know what you’ll remember until you’re older.”

I think the laundry room symphony is one of those things I will always remember. And perhaps, one day, I'll be the maestro wielding the steaming iron, and starting the dryer's laughter, so that a son or a daughter may rest their backs there, and spend the morning listening to me chirp while they drift in and out of a mountain breeze snooze.

I slept but my heart was awake

“I slept but my heart was awake"

Song of Solomon 5:2

1:02 AM 

Night after night it’s been happening. It’s time to go to bed. I watch the moon move from the left corner of my window to the right.

Black changes to blue to grey, and the sun comes.  

I don’t sleep well. Night has been reserved for a time when my heart gets so full that I think it will burst, but since I don’t want that to happen, I write it into pages and pages and pages of paper in my journal as a measure of prevention. I resist the temptation to write my heart to close friends. I resist the temptation to write a blog about it.

I weighed the pros and cons of all of my options, and writing a blog seemed alright. I’m not the only person in the world whose heart is awake. Maybe you’ll find some comfort here. And If I can offer comfort, I’ll give comfort.  

I attempted reading “When God Writes Your Love Story” and it was completely counterproductive. My heart wasn’t there with the writer. All of the “you’re single for a purpose, and this is your calling, and be productive with this time” was not making my heart less heavy. In fact, the amount of peace and contentment these other people are finding in their long-term call of singleness makes me feel like a mouse next to their super humanness.  

The problem is that the book was written by a married couple. They have their story. They aren’t single. And while they are trying to console me, it doesn’t work. All I have to do is flip the book over to see their embracing and smiling photo to remind me that both they and I believe everything they are saying, but it doesn’t make anything better…because I am single, and sugar coating everything with exclamation marks and funny stories about dating, well, it does no good. 

I am trying so hard to be a Jane Austen or Elizabeth Eliot. I’m trying to be this independent, confident, driven, self- sufficient, productive woman. I have seasons where I see her so well, and when I am thankful for my singleness because of the time, growth, conversations, friendships, and academic success I have been able to experience, but there are other seasons, like now, where she struggles.  

My inner independent, self-sufficient Jane Austen just wants to be one of the loved characters in her books who is swept away by a gallant, brooding, book loving, gentleman. And my inner Elizabeth Eliot who wants to be so oblivious of men that the only “he” she knows about is God, dwindles and thinks more of Jim and less of God. 

My heart was made to love. If you don’t understand me, the best I can explain it is like my heart is a moth in a jar just big enough for it to fit in, and no bigger. And the older I get, the more I experience and see and grow, the more I become, the bigger my heart gets. And it fills and fills and fills with hopes and dreams, and those things make the wings I was born with bigger and bigger. I feel the greatest need to fly, because I was born to fly, but I’m stuck in a jar because The Lord want my wings to get bigger, or because I need to learn something about the jar, or I was called to a jar….

Either way, when there are fireworks going off in your heart and nowhere for the fireworks to go- because you’re stuck in a jar- it starts to burn. 

So, as a 24 year old single (this isn’t old, I’m aware) I’m going to say that being single does not always feel like a blessing. Some days, it’s hard. I want to give all of my secrets away. I want a hand to hold, dag gummit, but there are no hands. I want to dance in the middle of a street (real couples don’t even do this). I want letters, but I settle for writing them instead. I want my stories to matter to someone other than the people I naturally belong to (parents/siblings).  

And then there’s God, the “invisible” He I pray to at night, the one whose words I read in the bible, and the ever present Love in my life, and yet, even that can feel like less than enough. I want to see His face, to hear His voice, and to know that if no man can know me, that He can. I want more, and more of Him.

But I’m learning that that is the point. The more I long for someone to love, the more I long to see God, my first love, because I hope that in seeing Him I’ll forget the other “him” and my heart will find some peace. I spend most prayers praying to find contentment in singleness, but contentment is rare. So, I have to pray to find contentment in Him, and that’s when some form of peace arrives.

Don’t be so naïve to think that this peace is the “I don’t feel a thing,” kind of peace. I think too often we have a misconception about what “peace” is. Real peace isn’t the absence of pain or feeling, it is not apathy. Real peace is finding comfort in God; it’s acknowledging that He is in control, despite the pain one feels. Pain and peace can coexist. This is a miracle in itself, and why peace given from God “surpasses all understanding.” At least, so I have come to understand it in my life.

Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him”

Genesis 2:18

Caught that, did you? If it is not good for man to be alone, why are single people still single? What I’ve considered is that Adam literally was the only man, and though Eve was given as a helper, she was a confidant as well, a friend, a soul-mate, I guess you could say. 

But, in case you haven’t noticed, you and I aren’t the only humans on earth. There are currently 7.05 billion people on this ball of dirt, and counting. According to worldometers.info, 32,000 people have already been born today, and it’s only 2:07 AM. Imagine how many new people there’ll be by 11:59 PM.  

Do you get where I’m going? We’re not alone, not really. It is true, it is not good for man to be alone, but that bible verse doesn’t guarantee we singles a relationship with a significant other, it just means you need to spend more time with a couple of those 7.05 billion people and find ones you can truly confide in. Find your soul-mate friends: Those who understand you, love you unconditionally like Christ, and can offer you a place of comfort. I think God made us “helpers” in friends, and thus far, I have found they all lessen my “he’s” absence.  

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:

He has made everything beautiful in its time”

Ecclesiastes 3: 1 & 11 

I’ll be 25 on February 14^th, Valentine’s Day. I’ll have prayed for weeks in advance that my heart will be asleep that day. I’ll have prayed to find contentment in the Lord, and that the absence of flowers and sweet letters won’t be noticed. I do it every year. And most years, I do find peace. I jokingly consider that God keeps me to Himself, and then I go to bed one year older, dreaming about the Valentines to come when the flowers at the door will be mine, and the letter in the mailbox will have my name on it. That day may never come, or it might.  

Dreaming about it makes me heart bigger, and that makes the jar smaller, but that’s life. Books won’t help the ache, sad songs just do a better job of articulating how it feels, and writing in journals just gives future grandchildren  (either mine or someone else's) something good to read. I don’t know why we have to be lonely for a short time or longer time other than God would have it that way. It’s not a real answer; it’s vague and potentially disheartening for those of you who started reading this in hopes that I’d offer something more concrete. Maybe God is jealous of you too, He wants you to Himself, more of you. Maybe He is refining you, growing you, teaching you. I can’t say. But I do understand, and I know the feeling. And if you feel like a mouse at times in comparison to the Elizabeth Elliots, go ahead and know that I have too. I think we all have, but “He has made everything beautiful in its time,” and I pray for both you and me, that despite our mousy, hungry hearts, we can all be a part of that something beautiful.  

I really do.

2:30 AM

The Grey

Grey. That’s the color the sky looks the moment the sun begins to rise. It’s not immediate. It starts slow. The sky black, and then navy, and then a shade of blue that has a hint of purple in it, and then, as the earth keeps turning, and the sun keeps coming, the sky begins to turn grey. And the grey isn’t just in the sky, it’s around the trees, and tip toeing on the ground. It puts its hands and face right against my window, and looks in.

It’s not the warm you would expect with the rising sun. It’s tired, and sleepy. It’s still. And for those who have yet to fall asleep, it’s like this quiet when everything stops. The night stops. The day stops. You’re caught between the two in a grey “before.”

Maybe time stops for a few seconds, I’m not sure.  And I imagine it sounds just like “Dream of Thaw” by Balmorhea. When the song ends, the birds start.

 They wake, and sing. If you’re waking, it’s sweet. If you haven’t slept, it’s disheartening. It’s like the world is starting over, but you haven’t started over. You’re still stuck in yesterday.

I’ve been stuck in yesterday a few times this week and last week. A few times, I’ve gotten to bed, and then, I’ve woken up, just before the grey. And I lie there, and decide I’m just thirsty. I get a glass of water, and empty the glass of water, and still, I can’t sleep. Names are on my mind. Endless names. Names I spell out in my mind, and then I pray for.

Other times, I’m caught in a pause, and I don’t even realize the time is moving, that the dawn is coming, until it is here. Those times, I like the grey. I like being awake. The world is sleeping, unaware, and I am there to see the grey, to hear the song, and to know that today has come.

I’m the one to welcome the day, to invite it in, to know that all is well, that the ones who went to bed crying will wake to light, their tears gone; that the ones who prayed through the night, will wake –some prayers answered- in the morning; and the ones who went to bed angry will wake less angry; and the ones who fell asleep next to the person they love, will wake next to the person they love; and the one's who went to bed drunk, will wake, glasses empty, sober; and the one's who were tired, their feet heavy, will be less tired, and their feet, lighter...

I watch from the window like from a tall tower overlooking the world, and I look for the grey, waiting for it to arrive. Ever watchful, hopeful. And as I see it coming, I slip under the comforter, and as the birds begin to sing, I close my eyes, and as all of those hearts beyond my window sleep on, I sleep, knowing that the morning is coming.

Our morning is coming.