The laundry room is the equalizer of all equalizers. No amount of money, race, or social status exists there. It's just parents trying to get to the next day. Some praying there will be a next day.
I have met some of the most beautiful people there in the laundry room. In the brief time it takes to wash and dry a small load of laundry a friendship is formed. I think the bond is already there, we just have to meet for the first time. We rarely get past first names, yet, we walk away knowing the dark scared corners of our hearts and minds. The Beautiful Uglies.
We move a strangers wet laundry to the dryer to make room for our own clothes to wash. We exchange the superficial reasons why we are washing laundry together. Then we dive in without noticing. We talk about cancer, chemo and the struggle of accepting it is terminal. We talk about her efforts to plan the inevitable. We talk about deleted chromosomes, the years spent making this place our home and a little girl who will celebrate a birthday next week, a birthday, that, in the beginning, we didn't think we would see. We talk about Hope.
We take a stranger's laundry from the dryer and carefully fold it just as we would our own. We place our wet laundry in the dryer. We talk about a topic that most spend a lifetime trying to avoid: the battle to outlive death, taking this path with our child over any other without them. We talk about our other children and how resilient they are. We talk about life, the beautiful life we get to experience no matter how ugly it can sometimes appear.
We are so different but yet so much the same. We are both cut from a cloth that is woven by determination, fight and the will to overcome. We make one another smile, laugh, feel secure. Without saying it aloud, we remind one another we are not alone.
We help each other fold one another's laundry.
Have you ever folded a strangers laundry? Try it and you'll realize how personal of an act it is. Very personal.
And in an instant you are standing at your hallway- you hug her, hold her for a second-she holds you- you squeeze - and then you both turn and walk away from one another toward the most beautiful creatures who have led us to find friendships in the ugliest of moments.
I am humbled to think that God has given me the opportunity to meet and know these amazing people in my journey of life. To have the opportunity to be a part of another's life and to help guard their heart as they guard my heart. To know that there are relationships and experiences that the human spoken language can't describe. To know a level of living that can only be experienced in a laundry room moment. To know that they are part of my journey, not Ivey's journey, but my journey - They are my blessings. They are angels- reminders -anchors-scaffolding.
Please keep my friend in your thoughts her path with her family is one full of the most beautiful Uglies. And she is a warrior momma made of steel and still so fragile. +
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Location:Scottish Rite
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