On Sunday mornings, I worship at the altar of the washing machine. While the pious sit in pews next to stained-glass windows, I sit alone cross-legged on the floor outside of my laundry room. It is a convocation of one. Each article of clothing I touch is holy because it smells of my children -- a mix of familiarity and the musk of youth. Cloth by cloth, I examine the fabric for this week's stains -- pewter gray slash of pencil lead, green crush of fresh-earth grass, brown drips of chocolate milk. The mild marks of those yet unencumbered by adulthood. I anoint them with stain treatments and set them aside, then sort the rest into mounds of darks, colors, and once-bright-as-snow whites. It's like separating the sheep from the goats, managing this alike-but-not-the-same. See how big his shirt is compared to hers; how big they both are compared to the new infant onesies I once washed reverently and continuously. I am reminded of marks I thought would never come out, both on the cl...

Ten years ago, I was still deeply in the trenches of being momma to two very young kids. Every evening after putting them to bed - at the time, they were 3 years old and about 6 months old - I performed a sweep of the downstairs. I gathered together the detritus of the day which small people are so good at spreading around, put things with like things so they could be found and scattered again the next day, and put each item in its place for the night like I was tucking it into bed, too. Little People sound-effects farm and five figures stored in the silo, check. Little People tractor and two figures chucked in the wagon, check. Ten rainbow colored stacking cups, each smaller than the last, check. Ten mini board books in a handled carry box, check. Ten washable Crayola markers in the box, check. But one night, while my husband was out of town for union business and I was barely holding it together for the three of us who were all cranky, overstimulated, and exhausted, one marker ca...

Year before last, on your birthday, I visited a Wind Phone. Do you know about those? Old fashioned handset telephones with curly cords, not connected to any pesky wires, placed in parks or gardens around the world for people to use.   Remember when I was in Dallas and you were in the hospital and I'd call every day to check in, and I kept calling every Sunday after you got home? Remember I always said, "Hi, it's me," and you'd say, "Hel-llo," a song that was a mix between comfortably expected and comical, your voice dropping a few notes between syllables?  Remember my senior year in college when Brandon broke off our engagement four months before the wedding, and I called, wordless, only to sob into the phone, and you sat on the other end of the line for hours listening to me cry, just being together?   Remember that time I called and told you Amy's grandmother died, and you moaned that nobody tells you anything, and I said they might talk to you mor...

I have befriended the dust bunnies that live under the kitchen stools. One is long and thin, with an errant Christmas tree needle for what I assume is a tail. The other is a bit chubbier with dust-fluff, and a tiny scrap of pink construction paper which I assume is a nose. Sometimes, between changing the latest load of laundry and wiping the day's stickiness off of the counters, I sit down at the table and chat with Walden and Gertrude. That is what I named them, after they had been there so long I decided to let them stay.   Walden (left) and Gertrude (right) Yesterday, as I swept away last night's dinner crumbs and set down a steaming mug of raspberry tea, I mumbled under my breath, "Why am I the only one in this house who cleans anything?"   “There ain't no answer. There ain't gonna be any answer. There never has been an answer. There's your answer,” Gertrude responded from beneath the kitchen counter.  "Ah, the question is not what you look at, bu...