Sacred Sundays

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 clothes and on myself. The dark circles of sleeplessness beneath my eyes in those first months, the blaring fuchsia of frustration that flooded my head in the toddler years, the bottomless purple-blue of guilt that blooms with my recent missteps.

Every week is a revival; I wash clothes and we start over. We are rededicated to doing what we can.  

When I power on the washer, it sings a short hymn of welcome. Then I bow before the open machine, appreciative of its never-ending service, and offer an armload of clothes and worries to the waiting repository. I toss in a communion cup of boosting powder and close the door with a plastic clunk. Into the dispenser drawer I pour detergent thick as liquid prayers, and select the load type on the round dial. Heavy sins, light sins, tiny delicate transgressions, all will be forgiven here. Water pours in like rain falling from the heavens.

The washer takes nearly an hour to cycle from start to finish, from wash to rinse to squeezing like a camel through the eye of a needle, and I say a prayer of thanksgiving that we no longer scrub and wring clothes by hand. These pants and shirts and dresses are automatically baptized every Sunday morning, fresh and clean as a new convert.

When the ritual is done, the washer sings another brief song to me. It is a hymn of praise and dedication to its purpose, a celebration of accomplishment. I relieve the washer of its wet weight, and transfer the load to the dryer for the next step of my weekly absolution.

And then the process starts anew with different clothes, different stains, different burdens. Forever and ever, amen.