Bliss: Laundry Day

 We learn. What is cemented in me now is a lesson from a dying colleague. She gushed at the joy of the tedious task of brushing her teeth. That was because 1) She could still do that self-care herself and 2) How clean and fresh she felt afterwards.

I got it. Those duties of daily life which seem so mundane and, yes, beneath us (after all, too many of us are quite overeducated) can be platforms for bliss.

One such experience is doing the laundry. If I stuck to the drill of using the residential complex's machines I couldn't extract the magic of laundry day.

Instead I drive to the lake area for that. Along the 57 miles I can shake off the obsessions. I gas up at the truck stop and jaw-jaw with the drivers, the tourists and bikers on their hogs. That gets me further out of my too little world. As poet Sylvia Plath put it in the "Bell Jar," I had been trapped in my own bad air. No more. There are yard sales. There are scouts being trained in survival. I hear the waves. Yes, a lake has waves. 

Inside the laundry I put my Tarot-Reading card on the bulletin board. That does bring in business but every time it does the card disappears. The dryers are all being used but there is a feeling of solidarity. Others tell me how soon they will be finished.

I cash out 10 bucks in quarters. The washers needs 14. Then I can continue to escape from my own bad air.

That includes taking the time to read a book. A free one, that is. The Geneva, Ohio public library loads up two bins with books in all genres and even some for children. The one I select is "Snow falling on Cedars" by David Guterson. The plot is a murder case on the fishing island of San Piedro. 

As promised, there are empty dryers. So carried away by the trial of Kabuo Miyamoto, it takes a gentle nudge from a mother with about four loads of wash for me to realize that I am set to go. And that's to the shores of Lake Erie. Three teenagers in offbeat headdresses get me to say that I do Tarot readings. They seem authentically interested. So I deliver three complimentary sessions. They laugh but nervously. I know I have penetrated their carefully cultivated veneer.

The 57 miles home include meandering through the parts of Geneva on the Lake, OH, which haven't woken up for the season yet. 

But on April 1st one had been proactive. That's Ruff Life on the Lake. It has offbeat cuisine for both people and their four-legged children. As I wait for my order those in that special kind of shop listen to how my little Arizona crossed over the rainbow 10 months ago and that I haven't as yet been able to find a senior small dog to adopt. For some reason I blurt out that I am leaving all assets to an animal shelter in Nogales, AZ. At the end of the month, I add, I am relocating back to AZ. One man predicts there a forever dog will find me. A woman wishes me a safe trip.

Back in Youngstown, OH I know that I have broken open. The trick is to stay that way. Plath couldn't remain outside herself. Her journals show how much she had become locked in herself. Eventually that did her in. I wonder how many in Youngstown are in that pickle? I wish I could lead a pilgrimage, much like that of Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales," to the laundry at 4710 Lake Road East in Geneva on the Lake. 57 miles of liberation from the self. And more on the way home. 

Tarot Card Reader. Intuitive Career Coach. Medium.

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