A SMALL TRIBUTE

I read one of those year-end wrap-up kinds of columns in the newspaper today – you know, the ones that talk about New Year’s resolutions, either the failed ones from last year or the hopeful ones for the coming year – and this author’s version of that annual exercise was intriguing.

                She contended that one should stop to be grateful for the quotidian, the mundane. She begins her recitation of gratitude with praise for her washer and dryer. I was hooked.

                As a young wife way back in the early ‘70s, I did laundry as my fellow Navy wives did: at the laundromat. We moved around so much, six months here, three months there, six weeks elsewhere, and we lived in furnished apartments and once, memorably, in a single-wide trailer parked at the side of a country road. My husband was training to be a pilot and we began in Pensacola, transferred to Corpus Christi, had a brief time in Newport, RI, and finally landed for what was to be four years in Jacksonville. Through all of that first 18 months of marriage, I hung out in apartment complex laundry rooms or in commercial laundry joints, where the machines were huge and pretty much mangled everything.

                In Jacksonville, we bought our first house. It was modest, located in a rural area, tiny, immaculate. It had a laundry room. No garbage disposal, but definitely a laundry room. We agreed that we could buy a washer and dryer on time. My husband, who grew up in a Navy family, had pretty rigid ideas about things like appliances. Sears was the first and only store we visited.

                Since I had gone straight from living in a college dorm (where, you guessed it, we had a laundry room) to living the nomadic life of a pilot trainee’s wife, I hadn’t used an actual laundry appliance that was located in an actual home in years. An important part of my day involved building my collection of quarters. I had been known to make several stops for small purchases simply for the joy of the 25-cent pieces I would receive in change. Quarters were the living embodiment of ease at the laundromat. And the lack of quarters – alas! Torture.

                So as we wandered through the appliance area of our local Sears store, I marveled at machines that had no coin slots attached. I lifted lids and read directions. I twirled knobs and peered into tubs. I read brochures. I compared Kenmore to Whirlpool and, Cadillac of washers, Maytag.

                My husband, who never shopped without having read Consumer Reports, interrupted me in mid-caress of a particularly attractive model in the trendiest Harvest Gold: “We are buying only Kenmore. And no color. White. It’s ten dollars cheaper.” I had faith; he had not let me down, ever, in matters of money. “Okay,” said I. I didn’t care – I was about to have an Actual Washing Machine in my Actual Laundry Room.

                And so it happened. A few days later, the Sears delivery truck pulled off our dirt road and into our driveway, and lickety-split, the laundry room was occupied as its creator had intended. Gleaming white, shiny, quietly efficient, there stood our very own Washer and Dryer. I was daydreamed about starring in a TV commercial where two women are discussing the joys of fabric softener.

                This happened 42 years ago. That Kenmore dryer dried my laundry for over 30 years, and I replaced it with another Kenmore. I have owned a few more washers than dryers, and my current one is a modest Maytag. (My butt-crack appliance guy told me, “Git the bottom Maytag. Same washer, not so many electronic things to break down, does a great job. Don’t let them salesmen talk you into anything fancy.” Mr. Butt-Crack has always steered me right.)

                The following is no exaggeration:  When I do laundry, I experience a little thrill, truly a twinge of pleasure. Every. Single. Time.  I have my own appliances. No coin slots. No scrounging for quarters (“Don’t give her the correct change, are you out of your mind? I need those quarters”). I’ve experimented with detergents, fabric softener sheets, Woolite for the Washing Machine, even those dry cleaning things (which don’t work). I’ve thrown the kids’ shirts in the dryer to “de-wrinkle.” I’ve washed baby spit-up, baby poop, dog spit-up, dog poop, and, on one particularly awful weekend, lots of vomit. And, miraculously, all those awful, gross, disgusting, smelly things have disappeared, leaving clean sheets, towels, blue jeans, sweatshirts, and ugly Christmas sweaters sparkling clean.

                The word “miraculous” is perfect. And I will never, until the day I do my last load of laundry, stop feeling grateful.