Taking Care of Laundry

One of my favorite scenes at camp-- the laundry hanging from the line outside each cabin. Colorful and crowded and messy, just like life. It's mostly just the towels that get hung out to dry. The old ringer washers were rough on towels. We were allowed to pull the towels from the tub of water and run them through the ringer (always under the watchful eye of my grandmother, with her admonishing us, "you kids keep your fingers away from that roller now.") I liked how the towels came out almost completely flattened, loved the way they fell into the laundry basket waiting on the floor below. Packing the basket to the clothesline and fighting with the clothespins to hang the laundry was a different matter altogether. I never cared for much for that. So that's how I feel these days, like I have been floating in a nice little pool, and now I am about to be run through the ringer again. I fret about being flattened and hung out on the line to dry. Flat and dry may be a lovely state for a towel, but flat and dry on a human being is, well, flat and dry. The good news is, my son is coming home today*, coming home to fill his empty chair. There will be restrictions and if he does not adhere to them to the letter, he will be hung out to dry, be forced to return to the place he came from. He has had more than a month to sit and think about things, to think about what he needs to do when he gets out. Right now, he is sure he does not want to go back there. Rehab is in the works, finding a job will also be one of the things he will have to do, and getting back to working on his education will be another. He says he knows he has to stay busy.

I have had more than a month to sit and think about what I do not need to do (for him) when he gets out. Please pray that we will find the healthy balance between what he needs to do and what I do not need to do (for him).

(*I thought I was going to get him yesterday when I started this post yesterday morning. The judge's secretary assures me that I will be able to bring him home today. They were supposed to change the paperwork to where he could be released to us on his own recognizance, which is what the judge said he would do all along. All it takes is a phone call. I don't quite understand why it was not done yesterday. I tried to tell my son not to get his hopes up too high in case something fell through and we had to wait till Friday. Now I am a little worried about trying to get this done on a Friday before a holiday weekend.)