Sanctity & Coin-Op Laundry

I've always loved laundry mats. I loved the idea of laundry mats, loved them without really knowing, but rather through learned, filter images, college experience and the fresh smell of scented fabric softeners. The white walls of my imagination, the spinning side-loaders, the ritual of cleaning and purifying.

It's harder to feel that way now. When I carry my laundry bag or basket down the street and into the brightly colored, yet still somehow a little dingy laundry mat, it's not the romantic notion of waiting for your laundry to dry. There are certain individuals who come in to drop off or pick up their "fluff and fold" order; there are others who wait with me. Usually, my skin is desperately lighter and out of place. I try my best not to be noticed while my clothes spin round and round; it usually doesn't work.


Waiting on the yellow bench by the door and the change machine, I sat embroidering the Taj Mahal onto a pillow case for my love. Stitching in purples a pattern from Sublime Stitching, I caught the attention of a few of the mothers doing their laundry as well.

As one mother and her little girl of 3 or so gathered their laundry and began to walk past me out the door, the mother pointed to what I was doing.

"See what she's doing," she said to her little girl. "Church."

The little girl looked at the embroidery hoop, at me.

"Iglesia," said the mother, smiling at her little girl, and they walked past me out the door. I didn't correct her, but watched them leave.

I don't know if she thought the pattern was a church or if she knew it was the famous monument to love half way across the world; I don't know if she just glanced at it or had never seen it before. I don't know that knowing that answering would make me like laundry mats any more or any less than I already do.

Still, to make the Taj Mahal a church requires the idea that it is sacred. But what makes something sacred? Could love alone provide the sanctity of a place? Is love what makes some place sacred?