I took that to heart, but the woods around the place were beautiful, and I wanted to walk in them. I decided to be smart. The cabin was in a part of Ontario that is on the Canadian Shield. That means that everywhere you go there are huge shelves, cracks, and chunks of Precambrian rock. It’s dangerous to walk on in the summer if you’re not careful, but in the winter it takes some extra intellect, since the snow covers the rock and you can’t see what dangers lurk beneath. There are ways around this, though, and if you’re smart, you’re safe. I decided to brave it. I headed out, warm and cozy in layers of alpaca and wool, and glanced at my watch as I left. At –30º C I had about twenty minutes to walk before I needed to worry. From the cabin I could see a ridge that overlooked the river, and I made that my goal.
The way to walk on shield rock in the snow is to follow deer track. The deer know their way around, and they live there all year round. If you walk where they walk, then you know that you won’t fall, because they haven’t. (Similarly, a place where the deer won’t walk should be avoided, and a frozen deer lying in your path can only be interpreted as a bad sign.) I was walking along, stepping in the footsteps of the deer who had walked before me, when I got to a place where the deer I was following had taken a long stride, and I (with my legs that are not quite as long as a deer’s) stepped between her hoofprints.
Instantly, my leg shot down into a crack in the rock, and in the beat of a heart I’d thrown myself forward to lie down (just as you should if you fall through the ice) and stopped falling. I crawled forward, out of the crack that had nearly claimed my life. When my heart had stopped pounding, I looked back at what I was sure would be a cliff that had been revealed by falling snow and avalanche, and felt immediately stupid. It wasn’t a big crack at all. I sat there for just a few minutes, gathering myself and looking back at the deer track. There, right before the crack, were two deer prints exactly side by side. That’s not a step. That’s a jump. The deer, in her infinite wisdom, had jumped over the crack she knew was there, and I had failed to notice. That wasn’t smart. I could have easily broken an ankle or gotten my foot caught, which is a bonehead move at the best of times but could be deadly in temperatures like this.
I picked myself up and brushed most of the snow off so I didn’t get colder faster, and I started to walk back to the house, following the deer track precisely, stepping exactly where they had stepped. Back in the house I made tea and knit for a bit while I watched night come, and I thought about what it’s like to be isolated in weather like this. I could see how it would be pretty easy to kill yourself just by getting lost. I’m sure that given an unlimited amount of time I could always find my way back to the cabin, but when it’s cold you don’t have an unlimited amount of time to apply your intellect to the problem. If I got lost up here I’d have twenty minutes to solve the thing. After that it could cost me a toe or two—or worse. If you’re not smart enough to realize that there’s no way to really get the upper hand on nature, then natural selection is going to take you out for your frailty.
Sitting by the fire in the cozy cabin, looking out at the snow and fierce cold, I thought about the people who lived here before me, way before me. Before wood could be delivered for the stove, before electricity, before hot water and phones. How did they do it? I wouldn’t have lasted an hour out there that day, and that’s even allowing for my modern boots and coat. What was it like to live in this country when all you had to keep you warm was your furs and knitting? My stack of woollies was drying by the fire. My mittens, hat, leg warmers, sweater, scarf—all of that to fight the cold with, and I still would have been in very serious trouble right quick if I had made even a minor error.
I’m sure the people who lived here were smart and tried not to get into trouble. Some of them probably froze to death anyway. I like to think that those were the stupid people, but I also like to think I’m smart, and I very nearly could have ended it all out there because I misinterpreted the track of a deer. I’m sure that the Canadians before me got lost, fell down cracks, miscalculated the time, got caught in blizzards, and never found their way home in the snow. I can even imagine them, putting on all their knitted stuff to go to the barn, winding a long scarf around their faces while thinking, “Stupid cows. I hope I come back alive from this.” In weather like this, in a place like this, for all my bravado and pride in being swathed in handknits to fight the cold, as sure as I am that I am better off than nonknitters in any battle against the winter, the truth is that without your brains, this place will have you. In weather like this, my knitting is simply a very minor insurance policy. My alpaca hat gives me maybe ten more minutes to get myself out of trouble. My wool socks, perhaps an extra fifteen before frostbite interferes with my ballet career (it could happen—don’t dampen my dream). In this place, knowing how to knit might be something that buys me a little more time to figure my way out of a mistake, something that I think, as I cast on for another pair of mittens and look out at the snow, might qualify as being smart and not getting into trouble.
ODE TO A WASHER: A LOVE STORY IN THREE PARTS
PART ONE
rom time to time, an appliance comes into the life of a human and finds its way into her heart. I know that seems unlikely, considering that in this love affair one being is animate and the other doesn’t appear to be so, but such was the love between my washing machine and me. Intellectually I understand that he was an inanimate thing, but the truth is that my washing machine was there for me in a way that transcends all fact, and to me, he was a real and cherished personality in the house. That’s why the day that my washer lay in the basement, disemboweled and de-hosed, ashamed, with his parts hanging out and some mysterious organ lying disassembled on the living room coffee table, in surgery, I felt real loss.
When I had moved into this house fourteen years earlier, it had a dryer but no washer. I was pretty sure (being thrilled just to have a house, never mind appliances) that I could live without a washing machine, which was good, because saying I was a little broke at the time would be like saying that teenagers are missing a little bit of common sense. I imagined myself loading up the play wagon with loads of laundry and three little girls and trouping off to the Laundromat. In the world of my imagination I had even convinced myself that this was better than having a washer, because where else other than the Laundromat can you do four loads of laundry at the same time? It was like having four washing machines, I told myself. This doomed arrangement lasted a mere ten days, until a stomach bug wracked the household one night and suddenly the idea of taking truly disgusting sheets and jammies down the street to the washer with sick kids hanging off of me like crabby accessories lost its romance faster than did Britney Spears’s first marriage.
At exactly that fated moment, my sister had bought a new house, and it had a washing machine, but she owned a better one. The steady and deliberate appliance who would become my faithful Mr. Washie was dragged up out of her basement and then installed in mine by my brother and his buddy Pablo, whom I paid with a single case of mediocre beer.
It was instant love. From the moment that I first lifted his lid to the moment he fell ill, we had a happy and, at least for the first nine years of our association, entirely monogamous relationship. (It’s worth noting that it was I who wanted to open our love to other influences, not the honorable Mr. Washie.) In later years, this fine appliance had opened his heart to Joe and the girls and allowed them (even though they did not appreciate him the way that I did) to enter into a partnership of sorts. Through all of the loads of diapers, sheets, and dirty clothes, Mr. Washie never let me down. (There was that one time that I accidentally clogged his pump felting knitted clogs, but I bought him a new one and he forgave me for my carelessness.) Mr. Washie had done more to help me with this family than any other thing or person on Earth, with more reliability and quiet concern than my spouse and friends often showed, and I am not at all ashamed to admit that I loved him.
Mr. Washie and I had the sort of commitment that most marri
ed people only dream of, and although it was sort of accidental, I know some marriages that are the same. Five years ago Joe and I remodeled the kitchen, and, because we’re not kitchen planners and are too cheap to hire one, we carelessly installed a large pantry near the basement door. That cupboard blocks the door to the basement a little bit, though not in a way you’d notice until you thought about putting appliances down there (or taking them out). There was no chance now of Mr. Washie ever coming out, or a new washer coming in without first removing a built-in pantry and its associated cupboards. That sort of built-in fidelity to each other meant that I was very committed to my relationship with Mr. Washie. I intended (because I sort of like the pantry too) that we would be staying together for the long haul, through thick and thin, sickness and health, so when Mr. Washie suffered a seizure one Friday, I implored Joe to go on a hunt for parts.
Joe, who is really rather handy, assessed the problem and figured which part needed a transplant. Then he called Sears (Mr. Washie’s middle and last names are “Kenmore Heavy-Duty”) and told them what washer we had. The lady on the other end of the phone asked for the model number printed on the back. Joe told her. Then she asked again. Joe told her again. She asked if there were any other numbers. Joe lay on the floor of the basement with a flashlight, and once again read the numbers to her with absolute precision.
“You’re sure?” the Sears lady asked. Joe, in a supreme demonstration of willpower, did not point out to her that he can read numbers—all of them, 1 through 9—with remarkable accuracy. He simply said, “Yes. That’s all it says.” The woman went away then, and when she came back she said something shocking. She had found Mr. Washie’s date of birth: 1978. My washing machine was a staggering twenty-eight years young.
Joe found this remarkable, and I was overwhelmed. This idea, that my noble and fierce washer was the appliance equivalent of a senior citizen, just about brought me to tears. I was suddenly so moved by his years of service to me that I could barely find the words for it. He had done easily 3,500 loads of laundry in this house, and there was no way to know what he had accomplished in the eighteen years he washed and spun before he came to live with me. I didn’t even clean his filter as often as I should (which is something I felt really badly about after learning his handicap). He had been in at least two basement floods, but that dear machine still did two loads of jeans and a whack of towels before falling ill that Friday.
Joe kept talking to the lady, and it turned out that Sears still made the part Mr. Washie needed, that it was a mere $30, and that Joe knew how to put it in. This was more than my heart could take, and I vowed to clean the outside of the washer with an old soft diaper to show my gratitude, but it didn’t feel like enough. Joe and I were so moved—me by my love of Mr. Washie, and Joe by the love of things that can be fixed in an hour for thirty bucks without disassembling a kitchen—that we had a little ceremony, there in the dingy basement, attended by cobwebs. We gave him a title. Let it be known far and wide across the land, that the noble washing machine formerly known as “Mr. Washie,” in recognition for his many long years of service, his unfailing loyalty and decent felting, for withstanding basement floods and holding his lid high even though he had not been given so much as a wipe in a couple of months, for his dignity, class, and not needing us to call a repair person who would have taken us for a serious ride, was thereby dubbed Sir Washie. We attached a magnet that had a picture of the Stanley Cup to the front of him to make it official.
PART TWO
few months later, right before Christmas, I was behind on everything—the shopping, the knitting, the housekeeping—and even though I’m perpetually behind on the laundry, I realized that we were about to hit critical mass. It was to the point where people were soon going to have to stay home because they didn’t have clean underwear, and so I tossed a load into Sir Washie. Now, I’ve explained that Sir Washie was my dearest friend in the world. I freely admit I’d had some pretty warm feelings about a few sexy front loaders I’d seen, but that’s like still loving your husband even though you think Pierce Brosnan is hot. Totally normal. In any case, I tossed a load in, came upstairs, and got on with my day. Later, when I went down to switch things over to the dryer (for which I hold no affection at all), I lifted his lid, reached into his innards, and discovered, with the sinking heart and feeling of impending doom that any laundry-slacking mother can identify with, that the clothes were all sopping wet. Soaked. It was like getting a phone call that your ninety-six-year-old aunt has had a stroke. You know she might be okay, but really, what are the odds that it isn’t the beginning of the end? Sir Washie was full of wet clothes, but not water, so I was pretty sure that he had suffered some sort of episode that left him able to agitate and drain but had stripped him of his critical ability to spin.
I’m sure that I don’t have to tell you that this was a full-blown crisis, and one for which I accepted all responsibility. I had noticed that Sir Washie was making an odd noise, but truthfully I didn’t look into it because I thought it was just age—I mean, Joe makes all sorts of noises now that he didn’t when he was a younger guy, and there’s nothing really wrong with him. I should have known, after all of these years of appliance ownership, that washing machines just don’t make odd noises. Washing machines make expensive noises, and I should have gotten him help right away. Instead, I looked the other way, and now, because I am not only the sort of woman who ignores an appliance in need, but also the sort of woman who doesn’t wash anything until people have no pants or towels, I found myself completely screwed. I personally was screwed while wearing a dirty old T-shirt and pants with coffee spilled on one leg, but I work from home, where it doesn’t matter if you’re wearing strange clothes. This crisis was going to be harder to break to Joe and the kids, since they were going to have to leave the house each day wearing last Christmas’s elf jammies. I looked at the budget and realized that unless that washer was fixable for about $1.46, somebody’s Christmas present was going to have to be the gift of this family not smelling funny. That bummed me out for about six seconds, and then I thought about it, and considering how I felt about Sir Washie and his contribution to the family… I’d take it. Wrap up a fixed washer and stick a bow on it. I’d be thrilled.
Joe went downstairs with the flashlight and a screwdriver, and it was only about fifteen minutes before he was back upstairs. I could tell the news was not good. Standing there, in the kitchen, he told me that Sir Washie was sick enough to need professional help. Brokenhearted, I started calling around to find a repair guy, preferably one who wanted to be paid in sock yarn.
PART THREE
t is with tremendous sadness that I write to tell you of the passing of my dear friend, helpmate, and tireless companion, Sir Washie. Sir Washie, a thirty-year-old Kenmore heavy-duty washer of extraordinary merit, departed this home yesterday after a short illness, which ended when the fourth repairman we called laughed himself into a coughing spasm rather than come out and even look at our appliance, saying that all he would do if he came to give us an estimate was charge us $100 for a death certificate. (Apparently he, like the other three repairmen, could tell from their cars that Sir Washie was suffering from a terminal illness, which I thought was rather unfair to my washer, and I told them so.)
I have relayed my deep love for Sir Washie and the many magical things he did for me. From his noble rendering of clean diapers when the girls were little, to the countless towels the teenagers foisted upon him in his old age, he selflessly served this family. He was patient, learning to enter into new relationships over the last few years as Joe and the girls sought (reluctantly) to share in the joy of coming to know him, and gently drawing their attention to the unbalanced loads they placed within him by politely thumping across the room. Even when they forgot to clean his lint filter he was understanding, and he never once spoke of the time that I clogged his pump felting six pairs of clogs for Christmas presents.
Perhaps his greatest gift to this family was that he never on
ce, in all of the time that we were together, burdened us with a repair bill at a time when we couldn’t manage it—even after having his bottom parts dipped in a fourteen-inch-deep icy basement flood, he just kept on washing. He was considerate that way. Sir Washie is the only entity on this Earth that helped me just about every day without complaining, judging, or expecting anything from me, and he will be sorely missed.
He will be especially missed because, as expected, his demise created a nightmare chain of events. Joe and I went shopping to replace him (and his slacker dryer friend, who is a limping piece of crap that I don’t love at all) and we carefully chose the smallest appliances we could that were still full-sized and reasonably priced. (Did you know that there are $4,000 washing machines? Seriously. If a washer is $4,000 I want it to get the laundry out of my room and bring it back folded after it made me coffee and told me it likes my hair. $4,000. Boggles the mind.)
When the new washer arrived on New Year’s Eve, the delivery guys went downstairs, fetched up dear Sir Washie as though he were common trash, hauled him up the basement steps, then were stopped by that pantry. I had been sure that this would be the case, but I still let them try. I thought maybe they knew a trick that would mean that I didn’t have to trash my kitchen, but they didn’t.
In our family, it is tradition to tidy up on New Year’s Eve. In fact, I usually clean for a few days leading up, believing that how your affairs are when the New Year dawns is how your affairs will continue for the coming year. We end as we mean to go on, and the idea of trashing the house—really trashing it—on New Year’s Eve hit my superstition button hard. What would it mean for the New Year if your kitchen was partly disassembled as the calendar hit the reset button? I’d tried to get the appliance delivered the day before just to avoid this, but here I was.
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