5. We all have to do laundry

It’s easy to feel a sort of gloom when you think about all of the things happening in a country, or in the whole world, and during times like this I find myself clinging onto small intimate moments with strangers.

Like the man who said “hello” and “thank you” as I left the gym and held the door open for him. Or the one in my neighborhood who said “aren’t you cold,” in a gorgeous, New York accent because we were both wearing sweatshirts during a coat sort of afternoon.

I love doing my laundry. I succumbed to the wash and fold hustle during my first couple of years in the city, and then I realized I needed to budget and I sort of liked hanging out in a laundromat. My parents met in a laundry room. And you find ways to pass the time. Like reading, or bringing your own coffee, or just looking around and smiling.

There’s no use in being in a rush most of the time. I love the other people of the laundromat. I love the people I pass walking around town. And I love people who have left their country to pursue something like an American dream. I feel very American because my great great grandmother grew up picking cotton, that was the first line of her eulogy, and my great great grandfather on the other side was a Faulkner sort of man, as most of the men on that side are.

There’s no one way of being American the same way there’s no one way of being human. It’s to strive maybe? We have a recent history that’s still so malleable. Alice Walker dedicated her work to “the American race,” almost as if she was making an attempt at defining it.

I think it’s very American to say hello. To nod your head in passing. To love your neighbors, even, especially, if they don’t look like you.

We all do laundry. We all get cold. We all need things to believe in. When you start looking for what you have in common with other people as opposed to what’s different, the whole world starts to melt into something a little bit softer.