I twisted and squeezed the wet floral dress with my bare hands, letting the remaining water drip from the yellow dress unto the red-tiled floor. I took a clothespin from the tin that Luis had given me and clipped the dress to the wire that stretched across the rooftop. Finished with my last pile of clothes, I exhaled deeply. Physically I was exhausted from the manual work but emotionally, I felt so relaxed. Taking a step back, I was awed by the sight of colorful clothes contrasting against the darkening sky as sunset settled. I stood still, listening to the sounds nearby: to my left, bells ringing from the cathedral, to my right, vendors announcing on speakers of homemade tamales and elotes, and in front of my new home, our neighbors turning up the music for an evening get-together.

There were a few moments in life that I felt like time had stopped; some of those were my evenings doing my own laundry in Guadalajara, Mexico. Frantic thoughts slowed to a plodding tempo and worldly demands quelled. When machines do the job, you are devoid of the process- both physical and emotional labor. But, I find comfort in the process. Washing dirty laundry by hand was a refuge, an affirmation of my womanhood, and an organic opportunity for reflection.

This proclivity of washing clothes by hand brought me back to my childhood in Vietnam. At the age of 6 and 5, my sister and I were responsible for washing clothes for the family; we devised a plan to wash the clothes in the most efficient way. Rather than using our tiny hands, we rolled up our pants, and stomped our feet on the clothes. Crickets chirped as we ran in circles around dirty laundry, as joyful as our childhood permitted us to be, pre-America. In America, I often saw my mother washing laundry with her own hands in the bathtub. Our bathroom was decorated with clothes, dangling on hangers. When I asked her why, she said she does it to conserve water and energy, a tactic used by many people in developing countries. Although the purpose may be economical, I see handwashing clothes as an act of resistance: in a technological evolving world dependent on machines, there are things we can do without. Without realizing it, my mother and perhaps millions of women were conserving Earth.

Manual landry brought joy to having conversations with the self. As I washed my shirt, I could smell the perfume that I wore to last weekend’s outing to Lupita; scrubbing against the faint brownish stain on my pants, I recalled eating hamburgers with my students after teaching at the university as a Fulbright fellow. Washing my clothes enabled these memories to rise again and be absorbed into my memory before perfunctory routines wash them away.

On a deeper level, washing my undergarments allowed me to observe the most intimate workings of my body. My gift to the world is sacrificial tinted water, at times a monsoon. At times, there were remnants of coagulated blood seeping through cotton in need of aggressive scouring. As a woman, I do not always have control of my body, when it bleeds or how much. Rinsing the most vital part of my body reminded of how powerful women are. If the amount of blood that women bled were poured together, it would form another ocean-unpalatable, cerise, and impenetrable by mankind.