Doing the Laundry - Song Page
© words & music by Annie Wilson
from the album Out on the Tallgrass Prairie
Album Note:
While washing her family’s clothing, ranch wife-mother feels depth of her love for those precious to her – hard-working husband and growing children.
Click below to LISTEN FOR FREE (to purchase go to STORE)
LYRICS
Down the steps to the basement in the darkness and cool
To the week’s piles of laundry I’m going to do.
I go through the mounds to sort piles of each,
Bed sheets and clothing and white rags to bleach.
I empty the pockets of heavy work jeans,
Time capsules left from my husband’s past week:
A sketch from the big fencing project he planned,
A business card left by the local feed man.
Some jeans smell of saddles and horses and sweat
From the days that we rode counting cattle out west.
His collars are crusted and stained dark with soil,
His clothing a record of effort and toil.
And then to the sorting of kids’ clothes and socks,
Wrinkled and rumpled and soiled and dark.
There’s play clothes & school clothes, shirts from their team,
The dress from the music school program last week.
Their pockets are full of found objects and stones:
Antique bits of iron that came from the barn,
Milk-droppers for kittens whose mommy is gone,
Creek shells and fossils from hikes we went on,
Field trip permission slips, friends’ silly notes.
I’m wondrous at how independent they’ve grown.
Their faces appear as I pick up their clothes
And look at the styles they feel show their souls.
Yes this odor of clothing both sour and sweet
Comes from the lives of those precious to me.
From a love fierce and constant that never will end,
I wash these soft fibers that cover their skin.
At the end of the day will be neat folded piles
From largest to smallest by age left to right.
And next week I know-well again I’ll have more:
This laundry - an endless - and sweet blessed chore.