Jen's Column / 7.21.06

I'm a laundry goddess! :)

* * *
My six-year-old son Christian was writing in what he calls his “room journal” before bed last night. The pages are filled with statements, such as “I have a dollar. I like it.” And “I know how to sew.” (Though, I’ll tell you, they’re not exactly spelled like that. I’m saving you a bit of deciphering.)

Before he went to bed, he proudly showed me his latest additions:

My daddy is smart. He knows how to count.

My mommy is smart. She knows how to do laundry.

Whoa. Wait a second.

When did that happen? When did I become the one who’s known for doing laundry? “I know how to count!” I want to yell to him. “Let me show you how I can count — what do you want? By twos? Fives? Tens? How about tens – let me show you how I can count to by tens.”

After all, it wasn’t that long ago that numbers played a large part in our relationship. “Do you know how much I love you?” this same little guy asked one night, years ago, as we cuddled in his bed, telling “night-night” stories: “27.”

“Oh, 27!” I said. “That’s a very big number.”

“That’s how much I love you!” he whispered, his pudgy toddler arms reaching around my neck.

Looking back, I now wonder if he was only humoring me. “Poor mom. She can’t count higher than 27. She’ll like this.”

I smile at his journal revelation, but my mind races. I review the unwritten chore list of our family. Sure, some of the chores are predictable — stereotypical as a Leave it to Beaver episode. Yes, yes, I usually end up with the laundry, and my husband’s almost always on garbage duty. But I’m the one balancing the checkbook at 1 a.m. while the rest of the family’s enjoying their sugarplum dreams, and my husband couldn’t be any more anal about keeping the kitchen clean. Our bedroom, on the other hand, is a mess. Neither of us can keep up with that.

But I start thinking about it — the laundry, that is. And, after much contemplation, I gotta say: Laundry’s good. It’s certainly harder than counting.

There’s the whole pre-treating thing. The stain removal. The bleaching. After all, there’s a fine line between too much and too little bleach. Not everyone can pull it off without completely destroying both the clothes in the washing machine and the clothes they’re wearing.

And there’s the whole balancing act that comes with clothing mass — adding enough so that you maximize the soap ratio, but not so much that you overload the machine.

There’s label reading. And color matching. And drying — deciding what goes in the machine and what hangs over the shower door. And timing — oh heavens, the timing. If you leave the clothes in the dryer too long, they wrinkle. Remove them too early and you burn yourself on the little metal jean rivets.

Laundry’s OK. In fact, I’ve decided I’ll take it as a compliment. Anyone can count — but it takes a real woman to do laundry.