Talking about Laundry

Today’s installment is a bit different than others. After all, I thought to start this newsletter as a writer first, and as a person with life updates second.

Doing my laundry here has been a deeply tactile and reflective experience. Last week, I found a laundromat near my dorm. I love sitting in the laundromat. I am guaranteed two hours of sitting alone to do whatever I like - I still find it to be a introspective time, watching the wall of machines melodically turn.

But before the laundromat, I had to wash my clothes in my dorm. On the upper floor, there is an open room with a faucet-lined wall and a drainage ditch along the wall. I would fill a bucket with my clothes, a handful of powdered soap, and water. After soaking the clothes, I would massage them by hand under the faucet. The cotton would become so heavy with the water, and the material felt uniquely smooth - borderline slimy - before the soap was washed out. Hundreds of tiny worms swam in the drain, dancing again with each dose of water as I rung out my clothing items. Then, I would hang the clothes on the line in the dorm’s sunny back courtyard. The rusty line left a mark on my white t-shirt the first time I hung my clothes there, before I remembered to turn them inside out.

Spending two hours washing clothes makes the household chore meditation instead. Keeping my hands busy with such a range of textures allowed my mind to wander. My thoughts stayed on clothes. But not those that I was washing:

I had to leave a lot of my clothes behind in my closet at home. My favorite clothes. I’m used to wearing them, and they make me feel safe and comfortable. I make them work in the four-season weather at home. They’re both perfectly predictable yet versatile. I never want to get rid of them.

Yet, they didn’t make sense on this trip. The culture and life I live here needs me to wear something else, something out of my comfort zone. Some of these items I couldn’t predict before I left, so I left my suitcase partially empty so I could get new clothes here. If I brought my old clothes, I wouldn’t have room for new ones. I need new clothes that just work here. I wonder if they will make it into my suitcase when I return home. Will I want to remember something that doesn’t suit me just because I worn it often?

But 10 months is a long time to wear something that doesn’t fit well or isn’t my true style. I’m just playing dress up for these 10 months. I will love my time playing, I know I will. But dress up gets tiring - asking what to wear everyday instead of just knowing. 

Mostly, I hope the clothes in my closet fit the same when I get home. I’m worried they’ll outgrown me - I expect them to fit the same, but I forget that fabrics can change over time. I’m worried I will open my closet and find that I shouldn’t wear them anymore, we’ve both changed over the 10 months. Even when seeing they are still my style, the materials could have yellowed. Maybe the sun shines through the door just a bit, and they are bleaching in the light while I am remembering them in a different way. Maybe they will just look different when I open the closet door - what if they don’t want me to wear them anymore?

But for now, while wearing something too tight or too loose or too colorful or too dull, I feel happy thinking about the clothes in my closet back home. There is so much potential to feel worried when I think of them, when I obsess about what they are doing in my closet. Are they enjoying the space I have built for them - the space I carefully organized before I left, because I somehow think I know what it will be like when I return? I have obsessed over trying to keep it the same. But for now I am just happy to remember them - the thought alone like one of the warm sweaters that I cannot otherwise bear in this heat. I have 10 months to see if my fears about them not wanting to be worn anymore are true. Until then, in my head, we fit the same. For now, they’re still there.

I only brought one backpack here, for all 10 months; I am not one to obsess over material items such as clothes. I hope it is obvious this is not about clothes.