A sketch by Kathleen Jennings.
One of my favorite books of all time, I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith, opens with the line, “I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.” The line came to me as I was throwing my purple sheets into the washing machine Monday morning. I looked at my dryer nestled up against the wall that would perfectly support my back as I bent my knees to write in my journal. My kitchen sink wasn’t fit to be sat in — the wine cabinet would surely get in the way of my head. But, the dryer… I dashed to my room for my journal. For the next hour as my sheets jostled in the wash beneath my feet, I wrote. To my right were four cabinets built into the wall; to my left, a door shielded by empty boxes from my move. Out the window, I could only see the fence and the archway in the middle and an array of tools, broken wood, and an old sink sitting on its side.
At one point, the washing machine pulsed so loudly that it shook the dryer. So, I sat there, jostled by the wash, and I loved it. The laundry room is small with brown walls, and barely any room for walking. It was the perfect hole to hide away in, even though I was already home alone. I liked the thought that if anyone came to the door and rang the bell, I wouldn’t hear them. “Sorry,” I said in my head, “I’m writing.” I think what I liked most about the room was that it felt like my own space. I’d claimed it for the hour it took me to wash my sheets. The rump, rump, rump of the machine actually helped me to think clearly as I wrote. Though, at one point, my mind wandered off into a daydream sparked by my writing. I don’t remember what it was, just that in the hour I sat there with my journal, I felt something.
I wrote how I used to write — a build-up, story, dialogue, ending. The act of it refreshed me. When I was done, had slid off the dryer, and transferred my sheets into it, I wished I had more moments like that. They were few and far between, and I wondered if that was just an unfortunate fact of life or a design of my own making. I thought of Cassandra and the kitchen sink in the crumbled, old castle, and missed the shelter of my teenage years. Of course, I know everyone must grow up, start paying his or her own bills, hold his or her own job, make his or her own way. But for a moment that day, I felt like Cassandra felt, and an out-of-body nostalgia hit me for the days when I could do things like sit in a kitchen sink and write to my heart’s content.
