Each early morning except Sundays the labandera fills up steel baldes with water to prepare for her task of washing clothes—a whole day’s process of sorting, lathering, soaking, rinsing and drying. Through her initial hours, she squats and with vigorous rhythm hand scrubs (heavily with whites and soiled children’s lampin diapers) beddings, towels, curtains, garments, undergarments, ending with rags, which she gently wrings into sudsy piles ready for baking. Yes, baking, as in kula. A quiet steady process that extends her chore into nightfall.

When I sat not squatted in front of my first washing in 1972 New York, I couldn’t help but smile when I rolled my laundry cart into the basement. All that was required of this elder daughter labandera was to measure detergent into appropriate receptacles (illustrated instructions readily atop machines), stuff clothes shut inside open-mouthed empty washers and drop appropriate number of quarters into slots before pushing the Start button.

For subsequent weekend laundry sessions I brought a school book or a magazine I could enjoy in 45-minute intervals, while I intermittently stared mesmerized at soiled fabric subdued and drowning in automatically rotating waves of cleansing.

I learned quickly that migrating to the temperate hemisphere meant I could skip the long process of kula. Of spreading sudsy hand-scrubbed garments on corrugated metal sheets, so hot tropical rays catalyzed the detergent’s cleansing power to penetrate weaves and wafts for hours. By mid-afternoon the labandera would have had to retrieve the kula and resume hand scrubbing; paddle-slamming; rinsing, and tightly squeezing moisture off each wet pile of clothes—her muscular arms like other Manila dwellers’ a tribute to ancestral washing practices along the Marikina River. Bent over she would have remained most of the day; straightening only to caress her tight balakang before she flicks then clips each wet item with a wooden pin onto the clothesline. She’d resume other chores and reappear before nightfall to unpin and neatly fold laundry into buckets smelling fresh before finally retiring to the house.

After about 45 minutes into my New York readings my laundry is “Ready to Unload,” rinsed and spun. I wheel and release my fresh wash along with fragrant softener sheets into designated open-mouthed electric drying machines. I drop in more quarters and get back to my book.

So here I sit 50 years since migrating from the old country; tasked with cleansing my body and soul. As a writer, I immerse in waters of lived experiences, poking at crevices, wringing out hurts and joys—and I wonder at the cycles I might have missed. What nourishment did I not absorb by not slowing down; by not catching the ancestral rays of sunlight through kula?