It Takes a Laundromat

We had a full day yesterday.  In the morning, got laundry done, and I daydreamed quite a bit while at it, as I do.  Laundromats make me dreamy.  I pictured Mads as a young man, doing his own laundry at a laundrette, because he's too sweet to make me do his laundry, too helpful to his Mama, though I hope, I think his home base will still be with us--with his Mom and Pop and Grandpa (because Bob will still be around)--between travels, that is, and classes, and whatever adventures he might be having.  Anyways, he's at the Laundromat, this very same Laundromat, with an open book, but he's not sitting in the dim back corner as is typical of the good-enough-looking young men with books at the Laundromat. He's up front, in the sun, so he can get the door for people coming in with heavy loads, so he can smile and converse and harmlessly (never aggressively) flirt with the pretty Mexican girls who come in, in Spanish, because I'm sure he'll be, at least, bilingual.  Maybe Francesca will still be working there; maybe she'll be the one who, over the years, helped him perfect his Spanish, and she will think of him indulgently and sweetly and admirably, because she watched him come in with his parents Sunday after Sunday, until he'd grown into the man before her, and because she'll know that she had some part in the character of that man.  I want Mads to have little aunties and little mothers everywhere.  I want him to be the community's greatest project, better even than a well-organized garden.  ("It takes a village" is a thing I believe.)

 

Of course, that requires Wolfman and me to be a lot friendlier, a lot more sociable.  I already smile at people more often, for Martigan as much as myself or those people I smile at.