Poppies

I was at the laundromat yesterday, a place I don't visit as often as I should. It's a family run business where they sell bananas and houseplants and little brass charms at the counter next to single use packets of detergent and dryer sheets.

The owner's name is Rose and she is a pretty lady in her late 40s. She knows more about my personal life than most anyone else. She's watched my laundry pile in various stages of life- happily matching men's socks and then not and back and forth several times in the 5 years I've been on this street. She knows.

Yesterday as I was loading the dryers, she came up to me and suggested I redistribute them. Towels with the sweatpants and all of the sheets alone in another. She described, with obvious rapture, the look of a properly loaded dryer. The gentle tumble, likes with likes, lots of movement and a perfect, slow spiral. She said it was a thing of beauty, a dryer loaded with care and I swear I could see a difference. A mesmerizing, hypnotizing difference.

Dying flowers normally are that hypnotizing, unexpected thing for me. These poppies just gave up on my nightstand and started to collect dust and I let them stay until the water evaporated. Everyone has those little secret happinesses- the spin of a dryer or the droop of a dead stem.