Love in the Laundromat

 

Love . . . thy neighbour as thyself.

                                                                        — Luke 10:27

 

A friend of mine had a sleeping bag too big to wash in her machine at home. So she went to a place that was a little bit scary: the laundromat on the other side of town.

 

You know: people smoking, tattoos, children with dirty faces running wild, stacks of old magazines and worn-out, cheap carpet.

 

As she and her daughter put their quarters into the machine, a man suddenly shouted:

 

"I TOLD YOU TO SHUT UP AND SIT DOWN AND QUIT BOTHERING ME!"

 

Her shoulders cringed. She turned around. It was a man yelling at his two sons.

 

The man was stocky, red-faced and dripping with sweat. The boys looked to be about 5 and 8. They were having a hard time just sitting there with nothing to do.

 

The younger boy stood up and moved his chair to the farthest end of the table, away from his father. The older one had a black eye. My friend couldn't help but speculate on how he got it.

 

From the looks of their clothing, they were poor. Very poor.

 

Where was their mother? Did they have one?

 

She kept one eye on a magazine and the other on the belligerent man. Again, loud bellows pierced the room:

 

"QUIT BOTHERING ME! JUST SIT STILL AND QUIT MOVING AROUND!"

 

Those were impossible requests for most children, especially boys without anything better to do.

 

Stony silence. Then more misbehavior. More threats. She got up from her chair, pretended to look at the dryers, and then sat down in another chair closer to the sweaty man. Maybe if he knew someone was listening, he'd tone it down.

 

No such luck. He yelled some more, and the boys slumped. He went back to his paper.

 

Maybe he had worked the graveyard shift and was exhausted. Maybe he was out of work. Maybe the wife had just left him. Maybe his father had been a bear, too, and he didn't know any better.

 

The washer stopped spinning. She put the sleeping bag in a dryer and motioned to her daughter. They left.

 

They were going to go to a restaurant. But mother and daughter talked, and their plan changed. They went instead to the nearest discount store. Their smiles began in the parking lot.

 

They filled their shopping cart with beanie babies, spiral notebooks, jumbo crayons with a built-in sharpener, a plastic bat and ball, a travel-size Trouble game, and a Barrel of Monkeys game. They spent nearly $50, a good-sized chunk out of their weekly budget.

 

They returned to the laundromat, put the clean sleeping bag in the car, and came back inside with two bags of toys.

 

My friend stood before the seated man. Her voice quavered: "Sir, we were wondering if you would accept these toys as a gift to your little boys."

 

He stared at the bags, then her. Long silence. Finally, defensively, "Why?"

 

The words poured out: "I just noticed your boys were having a hard time sitting still and they were getting on your nerves and I know how hard it can be when you're stressed so we just hope you will accept these toys as gifts."

 

"Why?" he repeated.

 

"We just felt like helping someone today," she said, throat tight. "Please."

 

His face softened. His eyes filled with tears.

 

He stood, shook her hand and introduced himself. "Thank you, Ma'am. You didn't have to do this."

 

He looked down at her daughter. "You're one very lucky little girl."

 

The boys started taking things out of the bag. "Can I keep this?" "Look at this!"

 

She said to them, "You can help your dad by showing him what big boys you can be."

 

The little one shook her hand, just as his father had. "Thank you, Lady."

 

Smiles all around.

 

When the mother and daughter were pulling out of the parking lot, through the window they could see the man and boys taking toys out of the bags together, smiling and talking.

 

Laundromats are for fresh starts.

 

Know what? That day, it wasn't just the clothes that got washed good as new. †