Let me start with the washing machine.

I bought it the year my husband, Frank, and I moved into our house on Elm Creek Road.

It was a plain white top-loader with absolutely no personality.

The kind of appliance you barely think about because it simply does what it is supposed to do.

For thirty-one years, laundry was my job.

Not because Frank and I ever sat down and divided the chores formally.

It just happened naturally.

He took care of the yard, repairs, the car, and everything outside.

I handled the house.

And I did the laundry.

Every week.

For thirty-one years.

Frank’s shirts were washed, pressed, and hung.

His socks were matched and folded.

When our son Marcus was born, I washed his clothes too.

Grass stains.

Paint on sleeves.

Socks that mysteriously entered the machine in pairs and came out alone.

I became very good at laundry.

I still am.

But after three decades of doing it, I learned something.

Laundry isn’t only laundry.

It is attention.

You handle the things another person wears against their skin.

You see the evidence of their days.

Where they have been.

What they spilled.

What they worked in.

What they lived through.

There is something intimate about caring for someone’s clothes.

I had willingly done that for the people I loved.

What I had never agreed to was becoming the unpaid laundry service for anyone who happened to arrive at my house with a bag.

My name is Dorothy Calloway.

I’m sixty-eight years old.

My husband, Frank, died four years ago.

My son Marcus is thirty-seven and works as a structural engineer.

He is extremely capable professionally.

Personally, he has always been somewhat less skilled at handling uncomfortable situations.

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