Washing the Sheets

This morning I stripped the sheets off the bed, carried them to the laundry room, and started the machine. I remember seeing the crank washer in my grandmother's basement and hearing the stories of how she rose at 4 a.m. on weekday mornings, washing the laundry before going to work. This was after the war, in the late 1940s and early 1950s. I still wonder how she did it.

My labor is not nearly as intense. And yet chores can feel like .... chores. I was surprised this morning by the delight that arose about washing my sheets. And that delight became a poem.

Washing the Sheets by Karly Randolph Pitman

These sheets have held
our sweat, our tears,
our sex, our blood. Dreams
and nightmares, lazy long
mornings, broken sleep
pierced by children's cries.
Nights of longing, anguished
pain, the murky mist of sleepless
sleep. Nights when we slept, back
to back, clinging to the corners,
a gulf wider than the hollow
between our bodies. Their white
softness cradles our bodies each night,
our spirits as we let go into the dark
abyss. Some weeks it feels like a chore –
stripping them off the bed, dumping
them into the machine, taking them out
again, hanging them on the line. But today
you notice your heart delights –
today is the day I wash the sheets,
today is the day I rediscover their alchemy:
to take dirty sheets and make them clean again,
to care for something that cares for you,
to see how dirt and sweat transforms
into sunlight and crisp coolness,
sharp corners as you remake the bed.
You smooth the clean sheets with your hand,
place the blankets over their white petticoat.
You understand now how it must have felt
to create something from darkness, to conjure
light, to mix order and chaos into beauty,
to survey all you have made
and say: it is good.

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With a grateful heart, Karly