A stretchy rubber chicken, a tiny monster alien, and a jack: the epitome of little boy laundry. The first rule of each load of jeans in a house of boys is to thoroughly check and empty all pockets. The second is to return the random trinkets to their homes before the washer starts the spin cycle, consequently sending each item bouncing into various corners of the room. Depending on the day, this might mean slipping on my shoes and going out to the garage with a handful of little nuts and bolts squeezed tightly in my palm.
I always thought I knew how to launder jeans.
The first time I taught you how to do laundry, our hands searched the pockets together, emptying the dirt, rocks, and yo-yo string. Our arms poked down the tunnels of each inside-out pant-leg and turned them right-side-in before filling the machine.
Even on the tips of your toes, you couldn’t see over the lip of the soap tray, which momentarily stumped me because it hardly ever crosses my mind that you are still so small in this world. You wanted desperately to press the bubble button on the soap dispenser, so after aligning it over the proper slot, I let you hold down the button; I watched the max line and waited for the moment when it was time to tell you to stop.
Trying to fill the silence between us, I explained the difference between the detergent, color-safe bleach, and fabric softener. Instead, you asked: Why do we put jeans in at heavy duty instead of bulky?
Because bulky is more like the comforters on our beds––the ones that fill the entire tub of the machine and swallow your arms as you carry them outside and help me stretch them across multiple clotheslines so they don’t touch the ground. The ones that carry the freshness of the outside that your dad adores into our rooms the first night after they’re clean.
Bulky is more like our thick socks that we wear when we hunt; the ones that keep our toes warm in places where the chill of the earth tries to creep through our bodies and into our bones; the same ones we wear when we run through the snow wearing boots that are now the same size—when did you grow so big?
Bulky is also your sweatshirt with the fluffy interior that you love. But love is the time I spend plucking out all those little strands and seeds of the outdoors that fill its inner lining, removing the evidence of that week’s well-lived life so that you can start anew, because a washer can never get them all out.
Then, within months of moving into this house, our first home, the handle on that washing machine snapped clean off, making it nearly impossible to open. Your fingers, still slight and young, don’t possess the strength to open the door and, some days, mine don’t either.
And as my fingertips throb red with the afterburn of slipping off the jagged plastic edge of the broken handle, I think about how I thought I knew how to do laundry.
This year, however, through an odd stroke of luck, I finally found a replacement handle. After the sun dipped below the flat horizon and the lights were off in preparation for bed, I passed through the hallway in front of the washer. When my socked foot came down in a puddle of water, my lip curled in disgust and irritation, but then I had the peace of mind to question why there was water on the floor in the first place.
I turned the lights on and discovered that the washer, despite being empty and turned off, had filled itself with water and overflowed. While mopping up the water, I pulled out the drawer on the washer to check for puddles. Now, imagine my excitement when the first thing I saw laying on top, still wrapped in plastic, was a replacement handle for the washer. It was right beneath us the whole time.
Out of habit, I still follow you to the hallway when I ask you to switch the laundry over, and the fan at the end of the hall watches us both and waits for the next flood of water. This must have been the fourth or fifth time it’s happened, but I lost count after the third.
That time, the door on the washer was latched closed, and the inside filled up completely with water, unbeknownst to me. When I opened the washer door, a tidal wave rushed out, drenching my legs and splashing across the floor.
And to think, I really thought I knew how to do laundry.
And then when you came home from church on that Wednesday night, you approached me with the hem of your t-shirt in your hands. I sat in bubblegum on the bus.
Glad to see that you kept your shirt out of the sticky pink mess smeared and stretched onto your waistband, I said to carefully put the jeans on top of the dryer before your shower so the gum wouldn’t spread onto anything else.
What I didn’t say was that I had no idea how to get bubblegum out of clothes, but I knew that for you, I would learn.
Food coloring, on the other hand, I couldn’t scrub from the seat of the pants you wore the day we made “moon slime” with baking soda, water, and dye. You pulled your sleeves up to your elbows, took a sparing glance at the directions, and announced boldly, “Eh. Directions aren’t really a Smith thing.” You proceeded to empty the entirety of both bottles of blue and yellow dye into the tray in front of you.
The green goo ended up on any surface it could find: the table, the floor, and somehow, the chair you were sitting on. You held your slimy green hands in the air, laughing and asking me to take your picture, and I said okay because I already had. Moments like these and memories we build together keep me grounded when I leave.
When I was closer to your age, I opened the dryer door and, for the first time in my laundry experience, a battered, worn, and warm five-dollar bill dropped onto the floor. After tamping down the spark of excitement that had just exploded in my stomach, I gave the bill to my mom, who proceeded to tuck it back into my hand and explain my favorite laundry rule: If you find money while doing laundry, it’s yours to keep.
Today, I tell you this while exchanging smiles with your crooked-tooth grin—the one that forms a deep divot in your cheeks—and your eager eyes crinkle and crease in the corners with joy, just like your dad.
On days we didn’t use the dryer, days during those summer months when the sun was just an exposed white circle in the sky, I would follow my mom out to the laundry line, the basket in her hands and the clothespin holder in mine. We couldn’t afford to run the dryer for each and every load.
Those same Kansas days ended with layers of thick black clouds rolling and boiling over one another, eventually filling our previously uninterrupted horizon and sending gusts of wind through the trees like whispered warnings. As the sky cracked in celebration, it would send the first spittle of water sprinkling lightly across the ground––followed by my brother’s and my mad dash for the clothesline, the air clinging to the hair on our arms and cautioning us about the oncoming onslaught.
And with the sky threatening to open overhead, one of us would frantically unclip the laundry while the other held their arms out expectantly to carry the load. Those nights are filled with memories of the fresh scent and soft, stiff scratch of the bath towels fresh off the line as we folded them away.
And now, instead of spending the warm hours of summer taking running starts at the tall silver T-post of my mom’s clothesline and swinging by the palms of my hands, I spend those hours with the sun on the back of my neck at my own clothesline, with my own clothespins and my own basket at my feet. My own clothesline that only has three wires rather than four because the fourth is coiled up and pinned at one end, having been broken before I had the chance to call it mine. My own clothespins that find their home in the bottom of my own basket at the end of each day because I don’t yet have my own clothespin holder.
Our dryer can’t afford to run for each and every load.
When you’re with us, it’s your turn to follow me to the laundry line, begging for my company on the trampoline as you dig through the laundry basket to find the scattered clothespins. Your dad got you that trampoline for Christmas one year and we assembled it that summer. We never finished making the stakes, so when tornado season blew through last fall, it blew your trampoline with it––through the alleyway, over the retired baseball diamond, past Piper’s car in her driveway. At this point, metal pieces were flying off and leaving a trail across the gravel road and over a barbed wire fence, where it finally came to a lopsided rest in the McDowell horse pasture.
We tied a strap between the trampoline and the hitch of the truck, towing it home where your dad heated rebar until it glowed red hot and hammered the shape of each one into a rounded-over stake. I pounded them into the ground over the remaining legs of your trampoline to hold it down until that week’s storm finished blowing through.
By the time we finished, the hems of our jeans were caked and splattered with mud from working on the sloppy surface of the earth.
When I was closer to your age, my mom not only taught me how to wash and hang laundry, but she also taught me how to camp, and with camping, how to build and light a fire. We’d stuff the lint from the dryer into an empty toilet paper tube to use as a firestarter, and when there wasn’t a tube to stuff, I fell into the habit of emptying the dryer trap and leaving the lint atop the machine––which drives your dad crazy, but he laughs anyway, asking why I do it.
And I guess I do it for the same reason you like to scrape and collect the thick blue lint from the trap after emptying a load of jeans for me: one neither of us will ever quite understand, even though I thought I knew how to do laundry.
Because then when it’s time to fold those same jeans that you emptied the pockets on, washed, and dried, my hands begin to fumble with the material, trying to recall the muscle memory that usually guides my hands through the process. Rather than folding the waistline in half, followed by the two folds of the pant legs, I have to pay attention to the size of the waistline and how many pant legs each pair has or else it doesn’t work.
The first time I tried folding your jeans, I fought with the scrunched-up waistband of one pair, trying my damndest to get it to flatten out. But the waistband was squinched so tightly because it was being held in place by the strands of elastic buttoned on the tightest hole, and it strikes me again just how small you are. But it strikes me even harder when I realize that my arm is the same length as your pant leg, and that if I were to fold the pant legs twice as I do on my own jeans, the material would just flop back open because there’s simply not enough of it to justify a second fold.
And when I hold your dad’s jeans, my knees begin to ache with the memory of the cool hardwood floor beneath them and the hard, unyielding plastic handle of scissors pressed into my palm as your dad grips either side of the right pant leg directly beneath the empty space of his knee. And the silence filling the air is as deafening as the metallic ringing snip of the blades as they slice away the material.
There are no words to say.
So, after the waistband is folded smoothly in half, I lay the shorter pantleg across and then tuck it into the longer one before the final fold. Otherwise, they won’t stay folded either.
And I thought I knew how to launder jeans.
While I was home over Christmas break, we went through all of your clothes together: shirts, jeans, pajamas, swimsuits, socks—the same way my mom would do with me and my siblings once every year. Everything had to be sorted––not only because you physically grew out of some, but also because you’ve now matured out of the Spiderman swim trunks, the superhero t-shirts, the colorful monster socks, and even the dinosaur pajamas.
But when I held up your blue long-sleeve shirt with a Brachiosaurus on it, I saw the hesitation flicker across your face because you wanted to say keep and you couldn’t bring yourself to admit it out loud. So, we tucked the shirt into the closet again and I suggested that you wear it on weekends and seasonal breaks––times when you’re not in school, because you’ve officially reached the age where your peers notice your clothes. As hard as I try, I don’t always have the words to make you feel better.
I thought I knew.
I thought laundry was another chore—going from bedroom to bathroom to bedroom to collect baskets; sorting items into bedding, delicates, whites, normal, bulky, jeans, and towels; getting on my hands and knees to sweep out the lost sock from beneath the couch; turning each dirty inside-out sock the right way; clipping and unclipping one load after the other to the clothesline and then finding the motivation to put the clothes away. And while doing all this, with my mind stuck on loop as time slipped through my fingers, I often questioned, Is this life?
But then you taught me how to launder jeans.
You showed me that laundry is the time you spend telling me that once, you thought the yo-yo string hanging out of your pocket was a snagged string from your jeans, so you snipped it off only to discover your mistake later; it’s the face you make when I pass the chilly wet comforter into your arms, fresh from the washer to be carried outside; the laughter we share while chasing the dog around the yard for our clothespins.
It’s the love I hold for you and your dad, and the soft smile that plays on the curve of my lips as the warmth of each piece of material glides between my hands, fresh from the dryer. It’s the contentment of knowing that this, this is my life.
By Grace Peak
Art by Amy Raymond
Body Issue | February 2020