Mom said to me soon after I moved in, “I’m old, and I can’t do much, but I can do laundry and I like to do laundry.  Would you let me do your laundry?  I would like to do that for you.”  I felt inclined to decline, and demurred.   Dirty laundry is a sensitive subject for me.  Returning from a five-month separation in 2014, I gently insisted on doing my own laundry.  Home from my eviction, I found I could not allow her to handle my dirty laundry, though she wanted to.  I could not let myself be vulnerable in that way.  Now, with my mother’s request, I am trying be vulnerable enough to allow her to do something for me that she can do and wants to do and likes to do, even though I like doing it, too.  For me, separating the colors from the whites and putting in the soap and running the machines is fun.  And I like folding the clean clothes and putting them in their organized place.  With Mom’s offer to wash my dirty clothes, I have come full circle to my childhood.  Mama is taking care of me again.  How tender that she wants to.  After thinking it through and breathing deeply, I said to her, “Mom, I would be very appreciative of you washing my dirty clothes.  Thank you so much for offering.”