"Shirts folded, fresh, crisp, stacked in a blue plastic basket, a look like the newly purchased. I would hook the brow of the basket onto the waist of my pants and belt, and balance it on my hip, as I struggled out her skinny doorway, coerced more narrow by her wot not and its made-in-Hong Kong, dime-store, antiques. My basket filled with clothes that never saw the machine before they found the tub. She scrubbed the grass and dirt and stain from the cuffs of my pants, the sweat from the collars of my shirts, the white back into my gym socks. With forever withered hands, a bar of lye soap, a metal washing board, and Depression pride, she alchemized old into new. She stood almost everyday in her basement, to knead the wash, to sow the laundry. I would often hear her deplore the dishes or ignore the dusting, but she never lamented the laundry. I get dressed now in the clothes of my making. They do not feel right. They do not look right. They are not right. I cannot plait her concentrated crease. I cannot recreate the fastidiousness of her folds. Already, I have found a cracked button on the wallet side pocket of a pair of pants. I could not fasten the clasp, and, at age 37, I felt surprise at the newness of this experience. I have learned, in these long eight months, to feel shame for ever giving her the grass stained knees of my childhood or the socks folded inside out from my carelessness."
Joe Gianotti, "Washerwoman". Published by Blotterature and The Literary Underground.