While I was in between jobs,
some weekends my
husband would take the
Taurus to work and
I would walk the
clothes down to the
Kross Town
Laundromat.
Seemed like after
four years
working 7 to 7 and
sitting through
in-class and
online classes and
two degrees I
shoulda been able to
wash my clothes at home, but
In those moments,
setting off on foot from Clive Avenue,
feeling the briefly cool morning turning into
a quick island warm,
looking down the road a piece,
I could feel my whole world folding and
bubbling over like the
divine edges of the
perfect curried beef patty.
It was the same feet that walked me
down the Morris Avenue block,
down to the Puerto Rican store to
buy my mama powdered donuts and
me and my siblings
long ice pops in the New Jersey summer.
It was the same feet that
ran around the old oak trees
in the back of Nana's house
when the first mobile home was being
modified to add the back rooms.
The same feet that
took awkward steps down
so many school halls in adolescence,
moving here to there,
shuffling in and out of the lives of
so many strangers while
looking for a place to settle.
The same feet that
found themselves on
Oakland Avenue in
Rock Hill when
other college plans had
failed.
All of those paths...
all of those places...
all of those long walks...
Walks that had been done with
no degrees,
no titles,
no particular purposes,
had gone somewhere
significant.
So,
with my feet slapping the pavement
and the heat coming in every minute,
the laundry bag on my back was
just a new rucksack on the
same old concrete,
same old ground.
It was all the same walk,
toward some end I could not see
that just happened to include
a Saturday morning walk to the
Kross Town Laundry.
- TDO Timothy
