Andria Flores

Five Minute Friday: Laundry

5minutefriday

Five Minute Friday is a weekly writing challenge in which hundreds of people participate. Everyone writes for five minutes on one word issued every Friday at 12:01am. Unscripted. Unedited. Real. 

The challenge for me is not the first five minutes of writing. It is to abandon perfectionism in the minutes that follow…

Laundry

I dropped the basket full of laundry and wept—an angry cry.

I hit my knees, hugged size 6 and 8 tee shirts to my chest and breathed in the scent of my children from their clothes.

It was the first week I did laundry after my ex-husband and I had separated. He had the kids, and my house was painfully quiet. Too quiet. I missed the chatter and non-stop noise of my children. I wanted to make them dinner, put them to bed, cuddle them up…normal mom-stuff.

But they were gone for two more days.

And, I was left to fold little boy socks and little girl pajamas. I missed them terribly—like the kind of missing someone that makes a knot in your chest that just won’t let go of your heart. I was angry that they were gone. This was not how it was supposed to be. Sometimes Plan B really pisses me off.

Strange how during unexpected life-changing events—like divorce, or worse—it’s the everyday things that stop us in our tracks. Things we used to complain about or overlook, like laundry, suddenly make head-spinning surreal circumstances a crushing reality too cruel to bear.

Kinda makes it hard to ever complain about laundry again.

2 thoughts on “Five Minute Friday: Laundry”

    1. Thank you, Brandi. It’s been almost two years since that day actually. But it’s a moment I will never forget…defining a new reality in my life. More than anything, it makes me infinitely grateful to be the momma to two of the most precious children in the world. I am so blessed that I get to breathe them in.

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