Perfect Towels Easter Rain 3/27/05

It was a beautiful Easter, at least by my reckoning, but I guess that's a matter of opinion. I love rain and take offense at weather forecasters on television who speak of rainy weather disparagingly or with negative connotations. It has rained this day, a steady hard rain, lessening at times, but not really stopping, punctuated by heavy downpours and thunderstorms.

I did laundry this afternoon, while cooking and watching basketball with the two boys who were home, in anticipation of the work week to come and to get #2 ready to go back to New Orleans tomorrow, after a spring break at home. The oldest called from NC to say hello to everyone, having driven home with one of his roommates for the weekend. I like doing laundry. I like the warmth and the way it smells and the satisfaction of having clean clothes and linens.

I remember one time, unloading the dryer as a teenager in our pretty house in West Virginia, being scolded by my mother for the way I folded the towels, and I remember believing her, thinking she must be right, and that there somehow must, in fact, be a right way and a wrong way to fold towels.

After I graduated from college, I took a job in the management training program of a large department store, and was placed as a "head of sales" in the linen department, assistant manager in charge of the bath shop. There, I learned what might seem obvious to most people, that there were many valid ways to fold towels, and that, in fact, the towels in our primary display at the store were folded in just the wrong way my dear mother, with whom I remain close, so disliked. It was hard for me to learn to let go of needing little things to be just so, of thinking there was a right way and a wrong way to do everyday things like fold towels, and I may very well have swung too far in the other direction, but often I wish I had learned that lesson faster.

The end of the rain will come soon, one last line of thunderstorms. It will be cooler tomorrow as I send my son on his way back to school and his younger brother and I head back to our routines after a nice break and a perfectly beautiful rainy Easter.