Iceland review - 2006, Qupperneq 42

In Iceland there is a warm, quiet kitchen that fits in the size of my house.
Two brawny chairs brood together at the table and the walls have been
red for a year. I painted them one night when I thought the air was going
to get colder. The fur of an arctic animal lies near the stove in a plush circle
of white. The windows, too, are filled with white, and the ground shows the
footfalls of a man who walked by an hour ago.
Because I have torn down the curtains, in a sudden determination to have
a better sense of place, the sun’s glare on the snow illuminates everything
inside with a blinding sheen. On days like these, I don’t do anything until
noon, but I should put my sandals on, go to the basement, grab the Saturday
mail at the end of the steps and wash a month of worn clothes. I’ve been
here long enough, sipping away at useless tea, wondering what dawn will
look like when it comes.
I still like to sit cross-legged on the porch atop the shelf that holds the row of
flowerpots. From left to right: geraniums, marigolds, 20-year-old jade (a gift
from Grandma) and a spider fern. With a magazine or loose newspaper
page, I dangle my legs off the ledge of the porch beside the flower that
died first. Previously pink and hearty, now it is a spindly fiber covered in hard
frost. The other flowers have each given up sequentially, beginning with that
geranium.
Then again, I’ve also taken to bringing all the blankets off my bed to wrap
around my shoulders just to have something to shiver under. But I will not
relent; I will not die here like an ungainly variety of vegetation.
There are chores to do today. I am taking the wicker basket and pouring
the contents into the washing machine, which has an old paper “Out of
Order” note taped to its buttons. The note is a lie: the secondhand store’s
idea of a joke. In the warm water, the snowflakes and the suds dissolve and
disappear. I discover that the washing machine emanates a morsel of heat,
and so I wait out the wash, rinse and spin cycle sitting on the top, thinking
about igloos.
When I moved into this house, I strung an old telephone cord between two
posts underneath the house outside the basement door. On both ends of the
cord are unbecoming, impossible knots. With the clothespins I methodically
hang every one of my shirts to dry. Sometimes I’m silly about it and apply
color theory to the way I arrange the clothes on the line. Touching the cool
damp laundry, my fingers become frigid and stiff. Soon, I will retreat back to
the kitchen and warm my palms against the chamber of the stove.
It has been hours and the sun has set; it must be time to gather up my clothes
from the line. Walking toward them, I do not hear the happy popping of
fabric lapping in the breeze. Icicles droop stoically from the telephone cord.
I recognize my jeans merely by their shape and size. The socks are humble,
frosty clumps.
I take some of the shirts and hurl them against the side of the house. Shattered
flakes of ice cascade from within the freshly cleaned threads. Again, whack.
Once more, break. A lifetime in California has not prepared me for doing
my laundry in Iceland. The only thing to do is bring them in, sort them, and
tuck them tidily away in a closet or a drawer.
DOING MY LAUNDRY IN ICELAND
By Lia Irene Mezzio
40 ICELAND REVIEW
PH
O
T
O
B
Y
G
U
Ð
G
EI
R
M
A
G
N
U
SS
O
N
, 1
96
4