With the beginning of a new year there is often time a pause of reflection. A reflection of life and the challenges and triumphs from the past year. Over all I could say very little happened last year, or perhaps a lot happened last year, and it is all a matter of perspective. The new year is good for one thing, and that is making me think about gratitude.
A couple of weeks ago I had invited my mother and the love of her life over for dinner and to put up the Christmas Tree. Traditionally we have dinner and drinks, before we get to the tree hugging part of the evening. I really do mean tree hugging, because how else are you going to get the lights on the tree? Over dinner we were trading stories of the past. because nothing brings forth a fresh bout of nostalgia like Christmas Traditions.
I don't know how we ended up on the subject, but I told my mother a story that she had never heard before. A story about why I am surprised to be alive, and one of the reasons I adore my husband. It was a story about laundry and gratitude.
Several years back and a few months prior to when my husband and I got married, we had bought a house. It was a beautiful house and gave us plenty of room to grow, however it did not come with a washer and dryer, like our apartment did. I had put off doing laundry as long as I could,. I draw the line at flipping my underwear inside out to get a second round out of them. It was time for me to take the six loads of laundry to the laundry mat, so that I could quite wearing the back of the closet rejects.
I had loaded up the vehicle, grabbed the detergent and every quarter that could be found in the house and headed to the only laundry mat that I was aware of, which was near the old apartment. It was dark out when I finally got everything in the car an ready to go. It was the sort of darkness that seemed to cancel out light sources and caused the normally bright street lamps to look like dim night lights childhood nightmares in the quagmire of the gloom. The laundry mat was devoid of human life other than me. It was weird, and I probably should have taken it as a sign and turned around and gone home, or at the very least tried to find a laundry mat closer to the new house. The need for clean undergarments was a strong motivating force for me to suck it up and donate some quarters to the cause of proper hygiene.
I have no love for laundry. I do however love my life. While I was sitting in the hard plastic chairs of the laundry mat, fiddling with the odd bits of entertainment that I had brought with me to make the time pass, I saw a young man walk past the the front of the laundry mat. I did not really think much of it, because the mat was in the middle of a residential area and people are known to walk. I didn't think much of it, until the young man turned around and walked into the laundry mat.
There is nothing creepier then a person coming into the laundry mat with no laundry. It is even creepier when said person decides to chat up the only person in the other wise empty laundry mat and then later follow them to their car an hour and a half later. It could have been harmless flirtation, but to me it felt like I was in the staring role of a murder mystery, and I was playing the role of victim. Not a single soul other than the young man, that occasionally jingled something in his pocket came to the laundry mat the entire time I was there. There were no witnesses to be found if something were to go south.
When I finally drove away from the laundry mat with the piles of clean cloths in the back of the car, half of them folded and half of them shoved in the basket once they were dry enough, I pondered over how I was still alive. All of the logic in my brain told me that I should have expired my last breathe in that laundry mat. That laundry mat that did not have any sort of security camera's or rest room, but was nothing but the bare minimum to get the clothes clean I should have died in and perhaps me in a different dimension did.
I was still shaking when I got home. My soon to be husband had never seen me so rattled as I told him the story. I fell into a puddle of tears on the living room floor as the adrenaline started to leave me.
The next day, my soon to be husband bought a washer and dryer so that I would never have to go back to the laundry mat ever again. We weren't planning on buying such an expensive item for several more weeks, since we wanted to have a cushion for any unanticipated wedding expenses. I had never been so grateful in my life. It would have been easy for him to shrug off my entire experience and tell me I was over reacting, or even tell me to try and find another laundry mat since that one creeped me out, but he went above and beyond to quell my fears, and even though I still hate laundry and folding it is my least favorite pastime, I would much rather fold laundry then be an unsolved murder.
Sharing the story with my mom, while we finished are evening meal made me recognize that I hate being vulnerable. Not a lot of people do like to be vulnerable, but I really have a problem with not being in control and that moment in the laundry mat was one of those moments that I rarely share with people, because it is one of those moments I was the most vulnerable and had the least amount of control. I have come to the realization that it is okay to be vulnerable, because without being unprotected I would have no depth to my gratitude. In order to be truly grateful, you have to know why you are grateful. I know why I am grateful.
I look at the jars of blood on the counter, and I wonder what I did wrong. Clearly something did not go according to plan, and now I need to figure out what to do with thirteen jars of blood. It would be funny if it were Halloween. If we were in October, then I would have the perfect prop for any sort of spooky themed party. It is March, and the jars with the deep red liquid and floating chunks of skin of oranges, don’t look very appealing and it is a little too soon be pulling out the Halloween decorations. I am still recovering from the St. Patrick's Day, Halloween can wait until we are past the threat of frost. 
The entire time of prepping the marmalade I was on the phone trying to wrangle my mind around the pink sheep that my niece was telling me about, and how if I ever found a pink sheep it is supposed to be lucky. The conversation bounced from topic to topic in a way that only an eight year old logic can understand, and I marveled at this new dimension of my life. I am not a cuddly person,I am not always an easy person to get along with, and I build walls and some of my flaws are my best features. Sometimes I don’t even think I am a completely good person, but I know for a fact that I not have traded that moment on the phone for all the blue in the sky. I was completely out of my comfort zone, and not just with the cauldron oranges and syrup. It was wonderful.
