“I think of her every time I do laundry”

I saw my second grade teacher, Mrs. Christianson, in town recently. As a bit of background, she retired 28 years ago, so she’s getting to be quite a community elder. Many of the elders in my small town, when they sell their homes, move into one of the two apartment buildings up on the hill. Mrs. Christianson lives in the same building where my grandparents had lived before they moved into the nursing home.

Mrs. Christianson said the funniest thing to me. “I think of your Grandma Ila every time I do my laundry.”

I think of my Grandma Ila — the one I refer to as Grammy in various social media posts — when I do a lot of things: gardening, baking, crocheting, canning. I think of her when I paint flowers. When my hip is especially bothersome, I think of her sciatica. Dandelions make me smile with mischief because I love them and Grammy did her best to eradicate them at the root. [Fun fact: dandelions are highly nutritious, and their deep taproots break up hardpan soils and bring nutrients up into the leaves of the plant, which can be used as mulch to return the nutrients to the soil. They also make a great snack for foraging chickens]

Anyway, I think of my grammy a lot, but not usually when I do laundry. You see, I don’t like doing laundry, and I loved my grammy, so the two don’t naturally fit together in my brain.

Mrs. Christianson continued her story. It turns out, they lived on the same floor of the apartment building, and found themselves doing laundry on the same day. Grandma Ila, with a twinkle in her eye, let her neighbor in on a little secret: “You don’t have to sort your laundry, you know. You can just put it all in there together and it’ll be just fine!”

My grandma had been doing the laundry for decades; she was in her 90s, after all. I imagine that after years of farm laundry, and then years of helping care for my aunt when she was ill, that little discovery was like a bit of magic she couldn’t wait to share. No more sorting!

So now, when I don’t sort my laundry as much as I did before, I think of my grandma. And when I’m making things in the studio too complicated, I think “how can I make this simpler?” Because something doesn’t have to be hard or complex to be worth doing.

My grammy is the reason I do any kind of floral painting. She passed in August of 2019, and that was the first time I was compelled to paint flowers.