By DAVID EPPS
Pastor

I do the laundry at our house. Sometimes, men who hear me say that snicker and act as though they feel sorry for me. Some have intimated that I must be henpecked. After all, they surmise, real men don't do laundry.

Nevertheless, several times a week, I separate the whites from the coloreds, the specials from the regulars, and wash, dry and fold the clothes, including the sheets and towels. I put up my things and my wife puts up her things and the sheets and towels. I have now done the laundry for our family for some 28 years.

It all started in 1972 when I was stationed at Quantico Marine Corps Base, Virginia. Each and every Saturday, Cindy would pack up the dirty clothes and, along with our newborn son, head off to the laundromat for several hours. I would stay in the apartment and read, watch TV, and rest from all the “Marine stuff” I had endured during the week. Real men, I believed, become couch potatoes on Saturday.

One Saturday, tired of feeling like I was loafing while she worked, I rode with her to the laundromat. As we approached the place where the dirty was made clean, I was appalled at both the location and the condition of the place.

The laundromat, the closest one to our home, was in a seedy section of the county and the clientele was of a rough nature. The truth is that the place was unsafe for anyone to be there for several hours. A pretty 20-year-old woman with a small baby had no business alone in this place.

So, being the hero that I am, I began to accompany her to provide protection while she did the laundry. I still read and relaxed, but at least she wasn't alone and unattended.

Ultimately, I began to help her fold the clothes and put them in the basket after they came out of the dryer. Then one Saturday, the baby was sick. I volunteered to take the clothes to the laundromat and wash and dry them. Her task would be to fold and put up the clothes when I returned home.

That's how I began to do the laundry at our house. Eventually, I discovered that whites come out of the dryer faster than the coloreds, and that specials dry much more rapidly than regulars. It seemed a waste of time just to watch the bundle of wrinkled, but dry, clothes sit in the basket so I began to fold the clothes, as well.

Soon, I was bringing the washed, dried and folded clothes back to our apartment where Cindy would put them in the proper places. And so it went for the remainder of my tour in the Marine Corps.

After my discharge, we moved to eastern Tennessee where I enrolled in the local university. We reverted to our old pattern of doing the laundry with Cindy taking the toddler and the clothes to the laundromat a few miles from the campus. This was my time to study.

But, as they say, history has a way of repeating itself. One day I drove past the laundromat near the campus and discovered that this place, like the one in Quantico, was a dump populated by a rough crowd.

Please allow me to hasten to add that most laundromats are well-run, safe and used by wonderful, moral and gentle people. But the laundromats in Quantico and Tennessee were dumps. They were also, in my opinion, unsafe. So, resuming my role as the family hero, I began doing the laundry again.

Eventually, I would graduate from the university and we would purchase a washer and dryer. But it's funny how old habits die hard. I found myself automatically putting soiled clothes in little, appropriate piles. The whites in one pile, the coloreds in another, the specials in yet another, and... well, you get the idea.

At the supermarket, while most men were looking at the steaks in the meat department or searching for “instant-light” charcoal for the grill, I would be comparing the relative price and strength of the various brands of laundry detergent. I discovered, in my quest for the perfect detergent, that liquid detergent was better for the septic system than the powdered stuff and I also discovered that fabric softener and spot remover were modern miracles.

As the family grew to include three sons, they, too, began to assist in the laundry detail. Whereas in the past Cindy had folded and put up the clothes, now that task fell to my three sons. For nearly 20 years, my wife never even thought about any aspect of the laundry. We, the men of the family, did it all.

Now that we are pretty much empty-nesters, the task of putting up the clean clothes falls to my wife. I do all the rest.

I have a friend named Bill who is a paramedic and firefighter, a macho guy if there ever was one. Here is a man who saves lives and runs into burning buildings to search for victims at the risk of his own life. yet, in a moment of honest reflection, Bill shared that he did the laundry at his house, too.

It was a hushed moment as the sacred secret was told. I felt a strange, new kinship with him as he made that personal revelation. I understood and recognized, as I nodded solemnly, that Bill, in his house, is a hero too.

Twenty-eight years of laundry duty have taught me this truth — “Real men do laundry.” And if you doubt that, just ask your wife.

The Rev. David Epps is pastor of Christ the King Church, serving south metro Atlanta. He may be contacted online at FatherDavidEpps@aol.com.

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