Clean Clothes

Sometimes the little things are huge.

Photo by Kai Pilger on Unsplash

“I’m calling as your friend, not your boss. I wanted to let you know that I’m wearing the camel blazer you gave me last year. I feel good wearing it. I just had to share,” my friend/boss said last Friday on the phone. I was wandering through a Giant Foods supermarket in McLean, VA, gathering ingredients to make soup and chili at my friends’ house. “It’s the little things,” she added.

“I get it. I got here a day early so I could hijack my friends’ laundry room and wash all my clothes before they got back from their vacation. I did laundry only once in Pittsburgh, which is kind of gross, and I loooove having all my clothes clean and smelling good.”

My boss laughed at this: “Our washing machine was broken for almost a month, and with three teenagers at home, it was bad. Now that we have a new one, I do laundry every day. It doesn’t matter what the size of the load is. I am doing it because I can!”

“Jackets that feel good and clean clothes,” I said. “It is the little things.” I paused. “I’m at the grocery store right now. I’m cooking for Ian and Matt and my friends whose laundry room I have commandeered.”

“You’re cooking.”

“I’m cooking,” I said.

I hung up the phone and wandered around the strange-to-me-grocery store. My list was small, yet as well as navigating unfamiliar grocery aisles, I also needed to hunt for gluten-free ingredients. I could not apply this level of concentration to the task if I was still on the phone. Plus, I don’t want to be one of those people who seem to be talking into the ether while going about my chores.

When I left Pittsburgh for my VA/DC visit, I brought some on-their-last-leg vegetables that I couldn’t bring myself to toss. I wanted to make my signature clean-out-the-fridge soup for Ian and Matt. For my hosts in VA, I wanted to have a big pot of gluten-free chili waiting for them upon their return home from Florida.

I wanted to cook.

I wanted to do laundry.

When my son and daughter were little, I was cooking and doing laundry all the time. Or at least it seemed like any waking moment not spent at work or kids’ activities was consumed by those chores. Cooking dinner for the three of us was a self-imposed non-negotiable. The three of us needed to sit down every night to a Mom-cooked meal before or after whatever sports/activities they were into, even if it was only for 20 minutes. It was something I insisted on. Those years were characterized by razor-thin margins and quick turnaround times. I needed to have dinner on the table by X time so that we could be out the door at Y time to get to whatever important activities were on the calendar. Yet however small those windows were, we ate dinner together, I cooked, and I loved it.

Stop. Rewind. Play the next day. And the next, and the next, and the next…

Of course, there were days when I needed to take a minute, pause, and gather whatever it is that parents gather when they do the same thing the 119,348^th time, even when they don’t feel like doing it. Cooking is my love language, and putting good-for-them, nourishing food on the dining room table every night was part of how I loved my children. So, I did it even on those nights when I didn’t feel like it.

From 1996 to January 2024, I had people to cook for—people or someone whom I loved and to whom I conveyed that love through hearty soups and stews in the winter, bright salads and ratatouille in the summer, and various baking experiments throughout the year.

That changed a year ago.

I spent the first months of The 2024 Upheaval unable to eat, which has never, ever, ever been normal for me. It was all I could do to choke down a poke bowl a day, eating half for lunch and half for dinner. It was the only thing that tasted good to me. It wasn’t enough sustenance or nourishment, yet it was all I could do. After it became clear to my colleagues that I was not eating as I normally do, my friend/boss started announcing that “we were all going to order from a place in town,” ensuring that I got something as well. It took a few rounds of this new lunch routine for me to realize what she was doing. She was making sure I was eating. She was taking care of me in a way that I couldn’t take care of myself. I am still so grateful to her for this tremendous kindness.

When I took refuge in my friend Mary’s house last winter while she was in Mexico, I didn’t cook. Her house has what she describes as a one-butt kitchen, and since Mary doesn’t cook, it wasn’t really set up for making my normal winter fare. I make a big fat mess when I cook, spreading out over counter space and dirtying many bowls, knives, and pots. Mary’s kitchen is beautifully decorated like the rest of her house, in a way only Mary could pull off, sporting equal parts Angels, Hearts, and Fucks with Rumi poems sprinkled about. For various reasons, I couldn’t bring myself to mess up her kitchen, nor did I feel like it. I made my morning coffee, my afternoon tea, choked down my poke bowls, and delighted in Mary’s artwork.

I fell into the habit of not cooking. I snacked. I grazed. I got takeout. I reverted to how I ate in grad school, which could not be described as well by any stretch. I didn’t prepare myself a meal with different components and consideration put into it. No love. No nourishment. I ate to survive or to numb.

When I arrived in Pittsburgh in July of last year, I cooked for the first time in months. I made some perogies with tomato sauce, and while the potato dumplings were cooking and the smell of tomato sauce filled my tiny Airbnb, I called my friend/boss to let her know. As a fellow show-my-love-through-cooking person, I knew this momentous development in the form of a simple meal would not be lost on her.

It wasn’t.

That day, I wanted to cry into my tomato sauce. It was a huge leap along the path back to me.

During my latest stint in Pittsburgh, I cooked soup and followed that up with chili. For me. Nobody else. And of course, I called my friend/boss to let her know.

This return to the joy of cooking (less so laundry) is significant. I realized that I was willing to express my love language of cooking to others for years, many times when I barely had the energy or bandwidth to pull it off, yet I was not keen on doing it for myself. It was a given, a self-imposed non-negotiable that I would cook for my kids and others, showing them that I cared through a frittata and maple bars, yet when it came to showing myself the same kind of love, I fell short.

Why wasn’t it a given for me?

The answer is multi-layered with roots in the patriarchy and being a woman of a certain age and ridiculous societal expectations and best discussed with my therapist. Perhaps the reasons why aren’t as important as the shift that is happening within me now. I not only want to delight in the simple things like a jacket that I feel good in and clean clothes, but I also want to cook. I want to cook for me.

This is huge.

Moving forward, I pledge to get into the habit of taking care of myself the way I take care of others, whatever that entails. I deserve that same nourishment and consideration, thought and commitment. I deserve someone wanting to put a good-for-me meal in front of me every night. Even if, especially if, the person doing it for me is me.