My brother was explaining about the dryer: “Don’t use high heat. Don’t do that to your clothes.”
I was in his basement, and I was realizing that someday he would likely say something similiar to me that I wouldn’t understand at all: “You have to blorp when you bleep blop, Liz. Otherwise the bloo won’t floo.” He’s thirteen years younger than me. This is probably where our relationship is headed.
“Why not?” I said, as a person, okay, as an American who generally feels that if a little bit is good, a lot is great.
“It’s hard on your clothes.”
I think of my brother and I as similar, and we are. We both have a dark humor, a passion for creativity, and a willingness to be as silly as we want. We both have a natural allyship with the weirdos, the sidelined, the overlooked.
But he cares about how laundry is done, and how clothes are treated.
Which I have to say I don’t.
I buy many things used, and I feel that if they make it through cold water and hot heat, they can stay in the family. Eventually they can become donated again, or become scraps for the Mardi Gras costuming pile.
The basement was appropriately basement-damp, and had a few kamikaze crickets.
Weeks later, I am home, and I set my dryer to “high heat” because it’s foolish, but it’s me.
My brother and I also both have chronic anxiety and panic brain misfires.
When I returned from New York City to his home near Philly, he hugged me, and I knew he understood that I had been insane, but also that our particular insanity comes and goes. We all have more experience with treating it or tolerating it.
Being told how to set my dryer also touches me because I’m the oldest, and I am so used to being expected to know everything about everything all the time.
And what are your thirties and forties if not time to household tend? To luxuriate in lists of how to clean things, to feel satisfied with sweeping floors.
My anxiety has been popping up here and there, still, sometimes in surges that overwhelm me, and I have to white knuckle, and other little lifts that I can ride and wait.
Last night, again, I felt like I didn’t sleep for a long time. At one point, I got up and cleaned my bedroom. The long, dull podcasts I put on get to the end, and I realize I haven’t really slept. I haven’t gone fully down the rabbit hole.
As a friend said recently, I am just a true night owl. I can put myself in bed at ten, and listen to podcasts for three or four hours, drifting a bit, only to get to real sleeping at three or four or five.
Tomorrow is back to the un-owl schedule of school.
Going back to school always overwhelms me with anxiety, though.
The last few days are truly torturous, as my mind flows through, I should have everything cleaned. I should set up Christmas. I should cook something else and freeze it. I should write a masterpiece. I should make a painting. I should meditate. I should work out. I should APPRECIATE NOW. RIGHT NOW.
I know it’s coming.
I know anxiety cycles will eventually break, whether they will require chemical intervention, or not.
Then of course Trump took over the DC police, another step in his road to totalitarianism.
I felt super anxious when I woke up today. I bought Kathleen Hanna’s memoir and snuggled up to listen. She dealt with an abusive father, and the ugliness of men, and I gradually felt calmer.
I went to get coffee and write, which I was not expecting to feel okay enough to do.
I had ordered an art magazine I love, partly to console myself about not seeing much art in NYC. I walked past a man with a t-shirt that said, “This area now has moustache.” I observed four teenage boys wandering in a pack with a soccer ball. They are about to go back to school, too.
I got home and sprinkled my mattress with baking soda, and then vaccumed it up.
What I could do was take care. Gentle care, or more vigorous care, with clothes nuclear blasted dry hot, or clothes slowly brought to crispness. I love knowing that my brother is far away, but still taking care of his clothes.
Going On 