It was the Tuesday after President's Day. School was out because the New York City school board thought a week of vacation in the middle of February would do everybody a lot of good. So my wife had taken two of our younger daughters and our son to a get together with some other out-of-school kids. Our oldest daughter was taking advantage of the opportunity to read in peace and quiet and our youngest daughter was asleep in her crib. So I did what all father's naturally do in that situation: I decided to do the laundry.
Now I know that might seem like a rather magnanimous and gentlemanly thing for me to do--and it was--but in addition to my magnanimousness and gentlemanliness, I was also tired of seeing our slightly stinky pile of laundry sit in our entryway. Living in an apartment building, we have the distinct privilege of carting our laundry to the basement to the communal washers and dryers found there. So after a few calls to my wife to locate the detergent and the quarters, I was on my way. The only warning she gave me was to not fill anyone of the machines too full or the clothes would not get clean. I could handle that. Once we hung up I'm sure she was casually mentioning to the other mom's that I was home taking care of the laundry. I'm sure I had scored some points.
Now, my mama raised me right, so I knew you divided the lights from the darks and washed them separately. I knew that if you didn't, you ran the risk of turning all the whites pink. Trust me, as a kid, I'd seen what my sisters red sweater could do to my tighty whiteys, and it wasn't pretty. Well, actually it kind of was, and that was the problem.
As I proceeded to the bottom of the cart something began to dawn on me: we have four daughters. This was not news to me. I had been there at each of their births (and I knew all about Miley Cyrus, Polly Pockets and Hello Kitty.) But I had never seen it in such a symbolic and stereotypically gender specific way. It wasn't that there was clothing my daughters or wife would have been embarrassed for me to see, nor were there piles of dresses, skirts and blouses. It was just jeans, t-shirts, pajamas, underwear, socks, onesies, etc, but as the washers filled up, I realized that they were filling up into three evenly divided loads: lights, darks and pinks.
I put in the detergent and quarters, set the whites to hot, the darks to cold and the pinks to…well honestly I don't remember, but the point was, they were in a class by themselves. And that's how I feel about my girls. I'm sure my mama would agree. And since they were on vacation, they'd have plenty of time to fold everything. That's how magnanimous I am.
She's not my mama, but for a real laundry expert visit: www.mahalo.com
