At first, I thought the man in my building’s basement laundry room was Tom Sawyer-ing his daughter.

She looked maybe 11. And he had clearly tricked her into thinking that doing laundry was the most fun thing possible. Learning how to open the washer (it had a tricky handle), wrestling the heavy sheets and quilts out into the rolling baskets. Sliding the baskets around to the stacked dryers on the other side of the room.

“Let me take one of those.”

“I’ve got it, Dad. I can do two at once. Watch.”

My second thought was that she was clearly an oldest daughter. An oldest son, in my biased mind, would have been laid out on his bed listening to music or playing video games.

A second daughter might have accompanied her father to the basement, but it wouldn’t have been about doing laundry, it would have been about doing something else. Younger sons would have been racing around the room making zooming noises and getting in everyone’s way.

A third daughter would have been right there, pitching in as hard as she could, and when that pillowcase fell on the ground, would have burst into tears and had to be consoled.

But the oldest daughter was having fun learning a new skill, demonstrating mastery. It sounded like the dad was having fun with her, putting fun into a Saturday chore.

He asked if she wanted to use the bottom dryer, which she could easily reach, or a top dryer, which she’d have to work harder at.

“Bottom,” she answered definitively, then, “— no wait, the top!”

She clearly saw it as a challenge she was up to, although the top dryers towered out of reach.

As I waited for my cycle to finish – that last five minutes always feels like 20 – I listened to their banter. Him, telling her to shake out the laundry before putting it in the dryer, not just clumping it in. (Was this a trick I had missed?) The two of them laughing together. As I listened to him lifting her up to put the heavy wet sheets in, asking if her aim was good enough to toss the lighter pillowcase in, it became clear why she chose the top dryer.

Because then they’d have to work together.

And just like that, a story was born in my mind.

People laugh when I say that my hobby is writing children’s books. Sometimes they ask when I find time to write.

“I’d be a great writer if only I had the time,” they confide.

(You’re not a writer if you don’t write. Make time.)

Sometimes they ask where I find my ideas.

In the laundry room.

On the street, as I walk by a restaurant early in the morning, and notice children waiting just inside the door for the adult who will shepherd them to school.

They pass me in the park, whining that they are tired.

They hunt me down while I’m out walking in the park, interrupt me onto a bench where I have to capture them in my phone and write them out later.

Sometimes they come from my life, from things I am feeling. Frustrated about something, I think about a child who might feel frustrated. What frustrates her? How did she get in that situation? How would she resolve it? How would this child think through a problem, that would be different from how an adult would think through a problem – or how an adult would think that they would think through a problem. (Honestly, sometimes I wonder if it’s really all that different. Adults just cover up their assumptions about how the world works and call it “logic.”)

Sometimes stories come from how I wish my life had been. A perfect day with dad, just the two of us, going for a long walk together. Picking out fresh bread and vegetables at a greenmarket. Doing laundry together, making it a game. Cooking a delicious dinner from scratch. Singing as we set and, later, clear the table. Cuddling together in front of the fire, reading a book together. Finally, being tucked into bed and dreaming about That Perfect Day.

It’s so real to me that I feel the autumn winds tossing my hair as dad and I walk together through the crunchy leaves. I see the sunset out the window while we’re eating dinner. I hear the crackle of the fireplace, feel the heat of the clothes as they come out of the dryer, the soft weight of the blankets as I snuggle into bed.

When I was a little girl, my father and I never had a day like this together. He didn’t have time. When we did spend time together, he was instructive about chores, not participative. It wasn’t until he was in his 70s and came to visit me in New York, that we spent a day together walking through the city, crunching leaves in Central Park, buying vegetables and bread at the greenmarket… We had too few days like that before Parkinsons confined him to Nashville and Covid prevented me from visiting. But oh, I would have loved a day like that as a child.

And that feeling goes into my story.                              

Sometimes stories come from watching my nieces and nephews. One nephew’s obsession with Lego turned into The Great Bedtime Battle. Another nephew’s hurt from constantly being told to turn down the volume, became Too Loud! A story made up on the spot to distract the nephews and keep them out of trouble while waiting in lines on a cruise evolved into The Haunted Bicycle.

Sometimes stories start with a voice in my head, a narrator with a voice so specific, that I have to find a tale to go with them. You know that voice that the narrators use in those 48-Hours true crime segments? That voice woke me up one morning, demanding a haunting mystery about three little boys, unrelated, who are strangely similar, even before they meet. They become best friends and mysteriously disappear one night. The only witness is an odd old woman who lives on a hill. She happened to be peering through her telescope on the deck of her remote house, searching the surrounding forest for aliens, and noticed the boys camping that night, when they had told their mothers that they would be sleeping over at each other’s houses. The next morning, the boys were gone, their tent left behind, their campfire smoldering. Where did they go? (Don’t ask me what happens in the end, I haven’t finished this one yet. And, based on the tone, this may not end up a book for children so doesn’t really belong in this post.)

Storytelling is how I process the world. It’s part of my sense-making. When I take on new problems to solve at work, I dive in, learn everything I can, imagine what someone else will need to know to do this in the future, and write an instruction manual for that person. (With any luck, once I’ve solved the problem, I won’t end up being that person again – I’ll have gone on to solve other problems.) Storytelling is my first love (I received my first rejection slip – well deserved – from Random House before I had even started school). Writing calms me down when I’ve had a bad day. It helps me imagine possibilities for my life. It got me out of the small town where my family was living. It helped me survive high school then college. It helps me think about what I want from life.

People sometimes ask how many stories I’ve written – it’s well over 100 now – and where they can find my writing. My professional life has been filled with writing, business writing, which lacks credits and would probably be of little interest to them. A few of my stories were published so long ago that they are no longer in print. So, I am an amateur: someone who does something because they are an amator – a lover – of doing it, not because they get paid to do it.

And because I can’t help it. The danged stories just keep finding me.

Like this one found me in the laundry room.