by Kay Etheredge
My mom was serious about laundry. In the myriads of memories I have of my mom, she was almost always in the kitchen, at the sewing machine, or doing laundry. What that meant for our family of 6 was that she washed everything in our washing machine but we had no dryer, so the clothes were taken from the washer to our clothesline in our back yard and hung out to dry. This hanging in the sunshine and flapping to and fro in whatever wind might be blowing produced a smell that no laundry product on the market can replicate. When the clothes were brought inside the whole house took on that smell. My mom liked to gather the clothes that needed ironing while they were still partially damp. She would go right to the ironing board with those, and the ones she couldn’t get to right away were placed in a large, plastic zippered bag and put in the refrigerator to keep them damp. If the clothes had already dried, she had a used, quart-sized Clorox bottle that she had poked holes into the top of and she sprinkled that water over the clothes to re-dampen them. I can still hear the hissing and spitting and belching of the steam iron as it touched those damp clothes. The rising steam produced a smell of its own as it mingled with the fresh outdoorsy smell of the clothes.
I would sit at the kitchen table and watch my mom iron, and every so often I would ask if I could iron something myself. She always told me I was too small and would burn myself, but one day she said she would show me how to iron my dad’s handkerchiefs. She showed me how to take the large squares of fabric, some with colored bands of brown and blue around the edges, and fold them. They were folded first into a large rectangle, then pressed and creased. Next another square. Press and Crease. The final product was a small creased square that would fit neatly and without bulk in my dad’s back pocket.
Recently I was folding laundry and came across several of my husband’s handkerchiefs. It was the folding of those that caused me to revisit the memories of my first ironing, which then sent me deep into thought about my mother’s gracious and diligent doing and re-doing of laundry…she seemed to be passionate about something that is such a chore, and she was good at it. And as I thought about it I was hit with the realization that my dad rarely, if ever, dressed up. Our family didn’t attend church, even though I regularly attended Sunday school at a small church in our community. My dad was a welder in the Steel Shop at Alabama Power Company. He wore khaki colored uniforms to work…matching shirts and pants. Even those were pristine when he left each morning, his white tee-shirt showing at the neck of his shirt, but when he came home in the afternoons it was a different story.
He stepped out of the car in the driveway he wore the grease, grime and sweat that only working with and around steel can produce. When I ran to hug him each day he smelled like a cross between the Viceroy cigarettes he smoked, the steel residue that clung to his work boots and uniform, and the Juicy Fruit chewing gum he always carried in his front shirt pocket. And I realize now that as dirty and hot and grimy as his job was, he always carried a neatly pressed handkerchief in his pocket.
Why did my mom take the time to do that? Why did it really matter if the handkerchiefs were ironed or not? I realize now that it was just one of the ways that my mom, a pretty undemonstrative person, showed her love. The meticulous way that she did the laundry was more than a chore for her. She did it well. She took pride in the knowing how and the caring and toting load after load to the clothesline and the bringing load after load inside to iron and hang in one of only 4 small closets in our home. There was no stain that was insurmountable, no tear that was too daunting to mend. My three brothers wore blue jeans that were patched and re-patched and when the knees were too frayed to patch again they were cut off into shorts for the summer. My dad, a stick welder whose salary was just barely enough to feed the 6 of us, wore uniforms that were as clean and pressed as if he were a corporate mogul.
When I think of my mom and our family’s laundry I think that maybe God takes that kind of joy and pride in His own. His love and mercies erase the stains of our sin. He patiently mends what we destroy. He creases and folds and there is great order in how and why He does what He does, even though many times we deem His acts random or unkind. He is constantly refining us and He does it with great precision. He knows what He is about. It is a joy to see Him working in the lives of the men here at Brother Bryan Mission. Some know Him deeply and intimately; some are still figuring it out. The staff here works long hours for small pay and they do it because it is a calling and when one enters these doors it is a mission field. Men’s lives hang in the balance. Like laundry, they have the opportunity to leave with a fresh, clean scent…a scent that can be an invitation in each man’s sphere of influence.
My daddy was good at what he did. He worked hard, long days. The clothesline posts in our back yard were made by him from steel, welded and mounted and strung with clothesline for a mom who was content to stay home with little ones, stand at the stove, and wash and hang out clothes. The smell of laundry filled our home like a promise. And my daddy welded, day after day, and the sparks would burn holes in his uniforms that he knew could and would be mended. And when he stopped to wipe sweat from a face soiled with steel grime, he did it with a starched and crisply pressed handkerchief.
I would tell her random facts as well, about my husband and children she never met and how at 61 I’m a grandmother and I can only pray I can do half the job she did. I would tell her about the ginkgo leaves on the tree in our yard and how all the fan shaped leaves fall in one day…how they leave a golden carpet on our yard that takes my breath away. I would say that yesterday I took Tobias, my two year old grandson, outside to play in the golden leaves and how he belly laughed and we threw leaves up in the air and let them rain down on our heads. About how he wanted to take one home with him and my heart swelled when I saw him march up to his mom, our oldest daughter, and hand her that one leaf…his golden treasure. And how on a small table in my living room that actually used to be her table in her living room, two of those leaves lie right now, a sweet reminder of a memory I made with Tobias.
Recently our youngest daughter mentioned in a phone conversation that she would like to find a copy of The Book of Common Prayer. Several days later I was in a thrift store and visited the book section, one of my favorite thrift store places. This particular thrift store has a section designated for old books. I lost track of time as I looked at the spines of very old books and pulled several off to examine. On this shelf I saw a small book and on the spine it said The Book of Common Prayer. It was a 1928 edition and the price tag was $2.99. I immediately put it in my basket for our daughter. There was a large label on the back of the book that said “Do Not Remove from Pew” and there was a partially worn off name of a church. The book had a certain smell…a smell that books acquire when they are visited eagerly and often through the years by hands and hearts that are hungry for something…knowledge, comfort, or the feel of the familiar.
Last night Cathedral Church of the Advent hosted the graduation and provided supper beforehand. It is always so nice to be at Church of the Advent…the beautiful building itself engenders a great degree of reverence and anticipation. The supper added a special feel of being around the table with family. We heard from Marty, who received his GED just this week at the age of 61. We heard from Al who has a very dramatic testimony of having had a brain tumor and how, through God’s help, he endured grueling brain surgery and 26 radiation treatments. Al is one of the most vivacious people at BBM…always asking how he can pray for others and carrying with him his scripture memory cards. He knows more verses by memory than pretty much anyone I know. He has challenged me without even knowing it to memorize the Word. All the men spoke clearly and bravely about God’s grace in their lives to help them overcome dependence on drugs, alcohol, food addictions, pornography, and more.
“Every time I go up the ladder and get into the attic the doorbell rings”, he said. “And then I come down the ladder and nobody is here!”
As we continued the task of counting and re-counting my husband commented that three men, all who had once been in the program at Brother Bryan Mission, came by and gave a donation earmarked for food. This was done in response to a social media post that showed the scarcity of food in the BBM pantry, and the conversation turned to how well each man is doing and how all three of their faces glowed with pleasure at being able to donate money to help restock the mission pantry. They showed great delight in being able to give back. I stop my typing as I hear children’s voices coming in for lunch, and it is encouraging to know that in these summer months when children are out of school and there are parents who may struggle to feed them, they can come to Brother Bryan Mission and enjoy a hot and hearty meal and in a small way, a sense of being part of a family.
I hold the pan like a treasure even though it is not fragile—maybe only the memories themselves are fragile. I can feel her hands and the hands of my mother on this pan. They are both gone now, and I am left to reap the harvests in their stead. I never imagined a time like this when I sat, innocent, and lanky and freckled from the summer sun, shelling peas into this very pan, my red hair damp on my scalp from the heat and sweat dripping down my back, my thumbs purple from the peas’ hulls, and I listened to the stories. I miss the stories most—along with the satisfaction that our family would be ready when the winter winds blew—our food was in the freezer and in the Ball jars in the cupboard, and our winter would be a time of sitting around the table and laughing and making our own stories as we reveled in the ones we all knew from the past—the ones that were repeated from old to young—and now my memory fades and there is nobody left for me to ask, “How did it go again?” I don’t want the stories to disappear like the food in the Ball jars that now sit empty—their glass mouths open and filling with dust and cobwebs in the cardboard box on the basement floor.
I had seen yo-yo quilts in antique stores and I loved touching the tiny circles and imagining the hands that took the time to make these …maybe women sitting around together gathering up the circles and making something not only useful but beautiful from scraps. In the movie Sleepless in Seattle there is one scene where there is a yo-yo tablecloth in the background and I decided to use the yo-yos to make myself a tablecloth. I chose fabrics with pinks in them to match the pink in my wedding china.
