Laundry: Honoring the Women Who Came Before Me

My mother reserved laundry for the weekends. My brother and I would have to haul our dirty laundry from our bedrooms on the third floor of our old, old Victorian-Farm style home to the unfinished basement. Our staircase leading from the main floor to the upstairs was curved and enclosed by walls that seemed to be holding their breath, so sometimes we'd just throw the piles down the staircase and collect the stragglers as we walked to avoid carrying the piles down the narrow staircase. The trek from our bedrooms to the basement seemed like a never-ending journey.

We built it anyway

Note: I've been thinking a lot lately about my childhood...so here's a short memoir recounting a memorable event at my grandmother's house.

"What in the hell are you two boneheads doing?" my cousin Jamison yelled to us with a swagger as Shany and I dragged pieces of cardboard to the front yard. Jamison is four years older than us and has always had a mouth on him reflecting his lower-middle class, industrial upbringing, but my cousin Shany has always been able to hold her own. "What does it look like we're doing, you nimrod? We're building a treehouse. Go get a hammer!" she shouted back at Jamison who stood on the small four by four stone stoop that jutted from our grandmother's house. Ignoring the banter between my two cousins--the most lively of the nine of us--I continued to haul scraps of cardboard from my grandma's basement--a basement of kids' dreams--mazes of boxes filled with clothes, National Geographic Magazines, and old electronics. But we discovered the jackpot of all boxes: empties.