July 1, 2020
My apartment doesn’t have its own washer and dryer in the unit. We share one with the rest of our building. Thankfully, it’s a small building, so it’s usually not too difficult to find a window of time during the week to get laundry done. Of course if I’m having a bad week and need the little pleasure of having clean clothes, it becomes impossible. But other than that, it’s not too bad.
Last weekend I was having one of those “I need the little pleasure of having clean clothes” moments, so when I walked down to the laundry room, I just knew the washer would be running with someone else’s clothes inside. To my complete surprise, the washer was empty. Empty! The dryer was running, but I figured it would be done by the time I needed it. So that was no problem. I loaded the washer with my dirty clothes, dumped some detergent in, and went on with my day.
I’ve always loved water. By that I don’t just mean water that you swim or relax in, but really water of all kinds. I love the rain. I love a glass of ice water on a hot summer day. I love washing cars in the driveway at my parents’ house and spraying the hose every which way. I love puddles, pools, lakes, and rivers. I love the ocean. I love the mist that sprays over patios at outdoor restaurants in the summer. I love stupidly long showers and boiling water for making pasta or tea.
I don’t love water leaks in the laundry room in quite the same way, however.
There’s a difference in dirty water and fresh water. Obviously. As a kid, my family went to the lake a lot with friends. I had friends who were twins, and their dad had a boat—a double decker pontoon, to be exact. We called it the “party barge.” We’d jump off the top like we were the queens of the world, striking poses on the way down and attempting to splash everyone with our tiny cannonballs.
The lake water was consistently brown. You looked dirtier coming out of the water than you did going in. Mom urged me not to wear my swimsuits with white to the lake because they’d come out oddly discolored after a weekend trip. Climbing the ladder on the back of the boat to emerge from the lake, you could see the little brown lines on our arms and legs as the water dripped down. We never thought anything of it—that’s just how the lake was.
I tend to equate water with cleanliness. But the lake was different. You didn’t come out cleaner, and you weren’t supposed to. Maybe that’s why it never bothered me much.
The timer on my phone went off, telling me it was time to retrieve my laundry from the washer and pray the clothes in the dryer had been removed in a timely manner. When I approached the door, I noticed parts of the concrete were darker than others. It was wet. I thought maybe someone had sprayed a hose, perhaps watering some plants outside. But then as I got closer, I saw the darkness on the ground was coming from the laundry room. That couldn’t be good.
Opening the door, I stepped in a small pool of water as it continued to slide off the step leading inside. This had to be my fault. Dryers don’t use water.
Turning the corner into the room, I fully expected to see water and bubbles cascading over the edge of the washing machine—a sure sign that I had put too many clothes in to wash. I was too dirty! But that’s not what I saw. There was water all over the floor, but nothing visible on the exterior of the washer. No detergent bubbles, either. I guess I was imagining something from a movie. You know, when the babysitter is a klutz and pours way too much detergent in, only to find a room full of suds half an hour later? I just knew that would be the scene I was walking into. But it wasn’t.
It appeared that the source of the minute flooding was coming from below. The problem was somewhere at the bottom, not the top. I opened the top of the washer and was surprised to find it half full of murky water, with all my clothes floating around. Where did all this water come from if the washer didn’t even drain the water from inside?
We have a Berkey water filter in my apartment. My roommate says it filters out the heavy metals that are found naturally in the city’s water supply. Because I’m not from here, I can neither confirm nor deny. So I drink the filtered water most of the time. Alison says the sink water tastes different, but most days, I honestly can’t tell. Some part of me feels better drinking the Berkey water because every now and then, when I pop open the lid to refill it, I see little particles floating around in there. Kind of like the brown on my skin from the lake. Kind of like my clothes floating around in the washing machine.
After a moment of staring at my clothes in the washer, unsure if they were actually clean or not, I started fishing them out. One by one, I pulled them out, wrung them as dry as I could, and then stuck my arm in for the next. I was wet up to my elbows by the time I was finished. I was also frustrated. The relief I felt seeing the available washer just 24 minutes earlier felt like a tease. That “I need the little pleasure of having clean clothes” sensation was no longer going to be the easy victory I was anticipating. I had to work for it. And it felt just about the same as if I’d had to wait to use the washer in the first place. So much for that, I guess.
When all my sopping wet clothes were tossed in the dryer—which, in true silver lining fashion, was empty upon my return—I looked down at the water around my feet. How did this happen, really? Did a pipe get clogged somewhere down the line and start leaking halfway through the cycle? Did I overfill the machine causing one of my garments to block the exit hole for the soapy water? There was no way to know for sure, but I did know that someone needed to fix it. Because all that murky, dirty water was still sitting in the washer while even more covered the floor and the ground outside.
Part of the reason I love the water is because I was a competitive swimmer. I firmly believe this. Although I know I must’ve loved the water before joining my first team, because kids who swim as much as I did have to have some innate love of water in the first place. Otherwise, you’d be miserable every day. But I loved it. Because of swimming, I always smelled like chlorine. I mean always. No matter how many times I washed my body or shampooed my hair, the scent followed me like a shadow. I could be perfectly clean and smell like I’d just emerged from the pool.
Chlorine is interesting when it comes to water, because it both cleanses and it doesn’t. It makes it safe to swim with a bunch of other people, but it doesn’t clean you, the swimmer. It kills bacteria in the water, but it doesn’t do much for you, the person in the water. At least not internally. Maybe it kills bacteria on your skin, but it doesn’t do anything for the rest of you other than make you consistently smell like you spent all day in a natatorium. And maybe that’s why I enjoy drinking water so much. It feels like it’s washing out my insides, keeping me hydrated. That’s always a good thing, regardless of how you are on the outside.
We put in a maintenance request, but it was Sunday, so who knew when a repairperson would actually show up. I left a sticky note on the lid of the washer apologizing to all the other building tenants, letting them know someone would be out to fix it soon. My roommate told me it probably wasn’t my fault. If I had overfilled it, surely it would have overflowed at the top, right? I wanted to believe her, but I wasn’t sure.
There are days when I feel like that washing machine. I feel like the good things turn on me. The things I love that serve distinct purposes in my life can flip like a switch and do the exact opposite. That water was supposed to make my day better, easier, cleaner. Instead, it made me work harder, feel worse, and spend more of my time than I wanted to give. My drive to succeed is meant to be a good thing, but some days, it’s the thing I hate most. If I wasn’t so driven, I wouldn’t be so disappointed when things don’t go how I’d hoped. Passion is supposed to be admirable, but when there’s so much that I don’t know what to pour it into anymore, it’s wearisome. Friendliness should be something uplifting, but it leaves me feeling low when it’s been a while since it was reciprocated.
At the end of a day at the lake, or a swim at the pool, there was always a shower. Or maybe a bath if I was in that kind of mood. The same thing that dirties me is what cleans me. The thing that cleanses me is the very thing that requires me to be cleansed. Whether my problems come from the top, like suds flowing out of the washer, on display for all to see, or from the bottom, hidden from the world yet bringing frustration all the same, there’s a way out. I might have to work hard to wring the dirty water out, but there’s a stream of clean water waiting for me after.
A deep part of me knows that loving water means loving the good along with the bad. The dirty alongside the clean. Even when I don’t want to admit it, I am certain the things that give me a reason to wash are just as good as the act of washing. Without the particles in the water filter, the brown of the lake, or the smell of chlorine on my skin, how would I ever understand the need and beauty of a soapy car wash, a hot shower, or a long drink of ice-cold water in the heat of the day?
Alexa Babin 
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