Laundry and Home Making

This morning I read “Cabin Fever” by Ken Gordon in the current issue of Poets & Writers. He wrote about the way some American writers have yearned for, and created, cabins to write in and to write about. Thoreau is the obvious first example, but there are many others.

The piece caused me to recall the sense of wonder I felt the first time I visited the re-constructed log cabin just behind the home of David and Elsie Kline. I immediately felt as if I was “coming home” in this writerly atmosphere. It seemed almost contrived in its random collection of books stacked on top of an old dry sink. There were snowshoes hanging on the wall along with old farm implements. There was a woodstove, of course, worn rugs, a rocking chair and a writing table (not a desk, mind you) in front of a double-hung window with the required number of panes. The single room contained an old iron bed covered with a handmade quilt. There was a loft with a ladder for access. For months afterward I longed for such a space of my own.

I still wish for it sometimes, but like Ken Gordon, I’ve come to accept the fact I’ll likely find my own space in something less taxing to my physical energy—since it’s a fact that these writer cabins are nearly always built by their writer-owners who are men in their prime with skills I don’t have—nor aspire to. (I do know a woman who built a straw-bale house with the help of her female friends.) As these men built their cabins, they accomplished something akin to writing itself. New writing often resulted—which often detailed the process of construction and its inherent life lessons.

My actual home has many cabin-like features—a fireplace, a loft, sunny windows, a table facing an east window that looks out onto a woods where a hawk is building a nest. I’ve gathered the clutter of my writing profession in the loft. Day after day, quiet reigns. I rarely turn on the radio and never touch the television. Unlike the writer’s cabin, though, my space continually begs me to do housework. Besides writing, I cook, clean, do laundry and wash dishes. I live inside my escape. “So you’re living the dream, then?” someone asked me recently. Yes, in a way. . . .

Cabin builders become grounded as they fashion their dwelling. As a woman, perhaps my gift is to find that same sustainable provenance in the homemaker-y work which usually precedes or follows my own writing sessions. In monastic life, every monk did menial tasks. They fit seamlessly into a life of prayer, contemplation and good works. I suspect the “dream” is not complete without physical labor.

In current culture, the division of labor and our specialization results in people having an ever more limited round of duties and chores. There are “service professions” to see to any personal need. Clothing care is outsourced to dry cleaning professionals. Food is catered or bought ready to eat in the deli section. Cleaning professionals efficiently breeze through our houses spraying lemon-scented incense. The list could go on.

But, what do we lose when we constantly rely on someone else to do our “dirty work”? When and why did these menial tasks become so objectionable? What we don’t manage to farm out to a service professional is often taken care of in-house in a most perfunctory way. There are machines for most household tasks. Some of these bring on their own set of maintenance and need for attention—but we mostly ignore these, accepting routine obsolesce.

Psychologists note the build-up of stress in our lives and our increasing inability to care for ourselves, emotionally and spiritually. This is even evident in the realm of self-care—whether it is hiring a personal trainer to help us exercise or a “nail technician” to make our hands beautiful enough for public display. Meanwhile these hands seem less and less capable or willing to perform simple tasks such as washing dishes or handling laundry.

What we’ve lost is our sense of holiness in the mundane and the blessing inherent in performing simple tasks. In an achievement oriented society, we’ve been acculturated to believe menial tasks are beneath us. We were made for better, higher things. There is an expert nearby who is “better at it.”

One of my favorite musicians is Carrie Newcomer. She has a song that includes the words: “Folding sheets, like folding hands, to pray as only laundry can.” She echoes Kathleen Norris who wrote The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy and Women’s Work. I relate to the idea of holiness in laundry, although in weaker moments I’m still impatient with no-iron shirts that need “touching up” or the jumble of dark socks waiting to be sorted. I recall the complaint of a mother of four about inside-out socks and the time-consuming task of turning them—her determination to teach her brood the all-important skill. (There are limits to the meditative effects, it seems).

Another woman mentioned the “ritual” of ironing table linens. She said this homely task brought closure to the holiday celebration for her. As she ironed the high quality linens, feeling their natural textures and scenting them with linen water, she meditated with gratitude on the memory of her recently gathered family, saying a prayer for each as she worked.

In winter I tend to rely on my in-house appliance servants, unlike my Amish neighbors who hang laundry on the line in all kinds of weather. But in other seasons, the rhythm of a day is self-evident with the hanging of laundry to air dry on the clothesline and later, taking it inside before sundown. I feel the romance of a European city when I see white dishtowels fluttering from a line outside my sun drenched window. When I bury my face in air dried clothing or slide between freshly washed and wind-dried sheets, I know I’ve cared for myself and those I love. Then, the simple things of life are gift enough. It’s a satisfaction one can cultivate and nurture, similar to the self-reliance Thoreau and the others raised with their timbers. It’s elemental, and nurtures something a writer—perhaps anyone—needs as they go about the task of building a dwelling for body and soul.
Lofty Thoughts