On Sunday mornings, we find ourselves at the laundry mat with the faithful, trying to get things clean. It occurs to me that they are the best and the worst of us all at once: doing the best we can, and knowing it’s not enough.
There is a breeze and a clean smell in the laundry mat. The sliding doors on opposite sides of the building pull wind in and out as though they were beckoning the Holy Spirit to dance. The baritone hum of the machines, the orchestra of muffled voices, the rhythm of different tongues, and the percussion of video games salvaged from the nineties and squeaky carts laden with wet clothes mingle with the moving melody of that mighty rushing wind. It sounds like a muffled choir sings in this place.
Waiting…
There is an Asian toddler in a sweater vest and pajama bottoms running around screaming. His mother sits nearby, one eye quietly on him and the other on the sleeping newborn in her arms as she waits for her clothes to dry. An overweight woman reads a paperback romance novel. A middle aged man sits at the same table every week and works on his laptop as some Mexican schoolboys play Tekken 3 behind him. A black family reads four-month-old fashion magazines at a table by the window. My husband and I play spades. Televisions dazzle and preach, two in English, two in Spanish.
Single people in their laundry-day clothes work quickly. The women all seem to have dark greasy hair covered by awful blonde dye jobs pulled tightly into messy buns on the tops of their heads and tattoos that peak out from places that respectable folks keep covered up in public. One woman shows up in a lovely blue dress and stilettos with a young girl who I assume is her daughter. They unload a pink Hello Kitty laundry bag into a machine quickly. I wonder if they came straight from church. Some of the single men stare at the game on the TV as they haphazardly roll up their clothes. Others ignore the screen and fold meticulously.
Doing their best to be good
The children wander, bored and fascinated all at once: there is nothing to do and a million things to see. Beautiful twin chocolate-complected boys that look to be about seven swing around the building’s support poles or mess with the video games, but never dare wander more than two feet from their watchful mother. A little girl plays on an IPad. A boy with bright eyes feverishly works on homework and tries to ignore his mother as she folds their personals.
The haggard attendant pushes a pile of the patrons’ dusty sins with her blue dust mop. She is ever collecting fast food cups from the tops of machines and tables. From the vivid blue lines that cover her slow-moving legs to the plum-colored dye-job that inadequately covers her grey hair, she looks to be about sixty, and tired. I am nearly positive she’s probably much younger than her dark eyes indicate. I have never seen anyone speak to her.
The people at the laundry mat rarely interact with one another: there’s an assumed shame here. The fact that they need this place keeps its patrons humble and appreciative of one another’s privacy. There is no meet and greet, no mingling, no banter, no idle chatter. No one shares tips for getting out grass stains. It’s an indignity for many to have to wash and fold their laundry in the presence of strangers: such things are private. Not all who wash here will need to do so indefinitely, but they do need to do so today.
“A spiritual thing is folding your clothes at the end of the day.” ~Rich Mullins
The laundromat is an equalizer, a public confessional with no doors, an admission we are incapable of providing what we need to clean the week’s dirt and sin from our linens and clothes. Its patrons know this, and because of that, they respect one another, and the atmosphere of this human place. I think it’s the sort of place one might find Christ on a sunny Sunday: it’s a place full of people who need to be loved more than they need to be judged. To enter the laundromat with one’s dirty laundry is to be humbled in some small way, to be humanized, to understand weakness. And it’s a chance to work on things, to set things right, a chance to leave this common cathedral with things in better shape than they were when you entered.