Washing Whites

I forgot how it feels to wash my clothes with my hands. Immersing the white shirt in water, putting in too much Omo. I like the froth, and the act of washing. In these times, I find it quite therapeutic. I do not have to think, I just have to move my arms back and forth. I find the sound of the water and the soap squishing against the shirt oddly satisfying. And when I get tired, I sigh and wipe my face with the part of my arm that is free of soap suds. In this moment, I feel quite happy with myself for just getting on with it, choosing to act instead of scowling at the clothes in my cupboard that don’t look that clean.

Done. And now the sight of my bedroom reminds me of  boarding house on a Saturday evening. In front of my cupboard, I have hung my clothes to dry on hangers. Only this time, it is the air conditioner that will dry them, not the fan, far away from my bunk bed, in the centre of the room. 

Next time I shall take the bucket of my clothes, go outside and sit there to wash them. That way, I can really travel back in time. Then, I shall hang my clothes on the line, and let the sun do the rest. I do not know about ironing though. There is no nostalgia that I associate with that. My poor ironing skills don’t match the perfection that should result at the end of a well-ironed shirt. Besides, I have no spray starch, which does half the job anyway. I might leave that part out and go rumpled. The lady who has been taking my laundry hasn’t been ironing my clothes anyway. I have nowhere to go, and thus no one to judge me if I were to walk around all rumpled. I don’t really care. I feel rumpled myself. 

Maybe that’s why she doesn’t iron my clothes. I probably have ‘rumpled' written all over me. Well, that’s okay. I reduced her workload a little when I noticed the armpit sweat stains and signs of my dirty neck on my white shirts. It was as though she had just rinsed them. The neck is the first place to start, or the armpits, if your intention is to do more than wet the clothes. I took matters into my own hands and went off to buy myself a plastic bucket and a big bag of Omo. I was glad to have had the few years of boarding school that forced me to learn how to wash my clothes myself. 

For a few years I had to hand wash my clothes, and then I didn’t. It takes me back to the time my parents, God bless them, spent thousands monogramming all my clothes and towels and uniforms when I was going off to school abroad. How else would Sis Lizzie have known which school shirt was mine? I remember the store in the mall, it was down the escalators and on the right of the movie ticket stands. I think it was opposite the stationary shop or so. I don’t remember that well even as the image of the mall somehow seems clear in my mind. I also remember a particular towel - it was green and blue. I think the other was orange and red … or something along that colour scheme. They both went with my bedding sets. Which went on my small bed next to a small wooden cupboard in which I stored the big box of KitKats my mother bought for me before they left me alone to figure out a whole new world in a whole new country at a brand new school. That’s what I told them when they called to say bye at the airport. “I can’t believe you are leaving me alone.” I am not sure whether I expected them to stay with me forever, but I did feel somewhat betrayed, and I didn’t care that I was missing Ms Venebles’ English class. I didn’t understand her teaching style anyway. Romeo and Juliet seemed like it was written in another language. I guess it was - Shakespearean. 

That year the house matron basically earned all my pocket money. To comfort myself, after school I switched between the huge slabs of crunch and smarties milk chocolate bars she used to sell. Then I had a big pouch of coins. My mother had left me that too, arming me with more comfort for my loneliness in the new and weird surroundings. So I would go to the vending machine, and I can’t, for the life of me, remember what it is that I would buy there. The coins ran out, and I grew older and felt less abandoned. So I began one diet scheme or exercise plan or the other. It has been a long time. Still, I remember the vending machine, in some sort of alcove, down the stairs from boarding, or the kitchen’s office, depending on how you decided to get to it.

Vending machines hold a different place in my heart now, especially the ones that house American chocolate. I have almost lost my taste for processed snacks. The operative word there, is almost. Nowadays, I find that after a few weeks of sticking with my fruits, vegetables, yam and eggs, the chemical undertones of those ‘treats’ become quite pronounced - ‘this tastes like crap”, I think to myself, before finishing it anyway, vowing never to waste my money again. However, it appears that I don’t really know how to keep the promises I make to myself. 

Perhaps I will try to stop making promises for a while, and just do what I can in the moment. 

And right now, what I can do, is wash the dirty neck off my white shirt - or well, my mother’s white shirt. She loaned it to me, as I seem to have outgrown all my clothes. But I am not thinking about which clothes fit me and which ones do not. No. I am thinking about how much more relaxing it is to wash my clothes than figure out what to do with the next hour of my day. I like this type of passing time, even as I am hyper aware of the privilege I have to suddenly be able to see the act of hand washing my clothes as a leisure activity. Well, privileged and calming or not, at least  when I am done, something shall be clean - a bright, sparkly, white - I hope.

Omo, you promised, so that’s on you. 

OFP

11 May 2020