When the laundry flooded for the third (fourth?) time since opening in 1929, we rushed to the scene as soon as we knew what had happened. By this point, everything had gone to shit -- we had been ostracized and excommunicated by the family for deciding to stay at home instead of rejoining the world as it kept on falling apart, been threatened and called names, without any appreciation or even acknowledgement of all the (over six solid months!) work we had done at 44 Hamlin, the work my mom and uncle couldn't do. But even still, we just showed up, ready to help in any way we could. We brought respirators and extra masks and worked quickly to save the contents of Poppop's office, a space no one had cleared yet but that seemed to hold great family value. As we worked amidst the filth and detritus of the city flooded over, we recieved nothing but glares and demands, and we felt as though we were robbers or thieves instead of the helping family members we were being. That we are.

When we arrived at 44 Hamlin to deposit the stuff, thinking my uncle & mother would want to look it over and take what they wanted from there - instead of from the literal trash hole Mayflower had become - we were greeted again with gruffness and cruelty. "Oh, you're bringing that HERE? Why? This house needs to be emptied, its not your storage space." Remember, friends, these things we were bringing into this house (this house which only Brett and I had spent anytime sorting through and clearing by that point), these things belonged to THEIR FATHER, to the man that they devoted both their lives to again and again. These were the contents of his office, his one and only man-cave and true personal space that he, Alvin-the-Father, ever had. The knick-knacks and bric-a-brac that they'd been surrounded by their whole lives, the things that their Dad - the man they adored to no end - prized above all else. You'd think that sort of devotion would make prizes out of the smallest bit of material memory, and yet, months later, after we dumped those office bits of memory and magic at 44 hamlin, no one but us had looked through them.

This photo marks the last time I stepped foot on what was, for a long time, my family's slice of Hartford - 266 Prospect Avenue. The site of the first (and last) Mayflower laundry, and then drycleaning, and then drapemasters (yes, that's a term). I grew up here, in this space which had flooded twice - famously - before but which, at least as a child, I never imagined I'd live to see flood again. This mysterious space that just a year and a half ago Brett and I offered to help to clear out, because again, here too, J wasn't able to unstick from his grief in any way that might allow him to do what had to be done and sell this building that had been costing him a substantial portion of the gross profits he made from a business that barely needed that space to operate. I always thought that the week Poppop died, J would have the building up for sale, but I underestimated how stunted and grief-stricken he'd truly be. In the end, a mysterious Hassid bought the site for a mysterious amount of money, in a circumstance we all seemed to agree (one of the few common grounds we've all found in years) that Poppop may very well have set up from before or beyond the grave.

During one of our clean-out visit we went through Robert's sewing corner and corralled all the buttons and notions, the rickrack and edging, zippers galore, and squirrelled them away for when we had time to take them. A collection I had envied and longed to put my hands through for my whole life, finally destined to be mine. We're talking tens of thousands of buttons here from 1930 on, along with a collection of cloth notions that could have served as inventory to start a small sewing store. I guess I could have always demanded to see what was back there, or pilfered from the stocks when Robert was away - but it always seemed so sacred to me. He was so polite and serious and that space felt so fully and completely his. For all I know, he bought half that shit with his own money anyways. Who knows, really. But of course, the flood got to that precious collection before we did. By the time we got there I didn't even bother to really look for those treasures, partly because of the state of the place and partly because I felt like any selfish act would have been proof of the image they all projected on me, us.

The laundry was opened by my Great Grandparents, Celia and Pinney Katz, in the midst of the 1929 depression, and grew until it didn't under my grandfather and uncle's stewardship. My Poppop essentially stole the business from his aging Mother-in-Law, my Nana, while she was away on vacation, and then some time later my uncle traded my mom some stocks for the deed to the building, securing his key involvement in the company. Nana and Poppop never got along well after the coup, and I try to work with Nana to release that resentment fueled by the ongoing toxic misogyny that runs through this family like the Connecticut divides Hartford on through. This toxicity and behind-closed-doors repression seem to hold a special sort of ire in multiple generations of ancestors who feel settled but also determined to see these way of relating eradicated. I continue doing what I can do to end these patterns through inter-dimensional awareness and personal choice generated by rigorous awareness and heart-led holistic compassion.

The truth is, at least for my entire lifetime and I'm sure much longer than that, Mayflower was a sweatshop, employing underprivileged and minimally educated individuals who were willing and able to do extremely hard and dangerous phyiscal labor without much more than minimum wage in return. When Mayflower closed its plant in the mid 2010s they didn't celebrate or compensate their long-standing employees in any ways that seemed fit. Of course, I asked a million questions and put up a stink about it but no one cared, and there was nothing I could do about it. I'll never forget how hot it was in that room, or how kind everyone who worked there was, and how hard it was to comprehend how people who were so clearly being treated lesser than they deserved showed up again and again with more than anyone in my family had a right to receive in return.

One year, at the annual Christmas party that THE WORKERS organized and mostly catered, and to which my family was always invited, I witnessed one of those wild moments of humanity where for a split second something so wrong gets to be sort of right and you can laugh and feel like, okay, I get it, life sucks but also, look at how it turns itself over and lets you laugh, right? Look at how fucking tenuous these absurd social strata really are, right? It was time for the secret santa, which my mom and uncle would sometimes participate in, and it came time for my uncle to open his gift. Inside was a package of brand new underwear. Everyone burst out laughing, with Jimmy trying to ruffle up a chuckle, when the woman who had gotten him and had picked out his gift chimed in above the din "...I wash your clothes! I know your size!" generous enough, she was, to leave out the other obvious part of the story - your underwear is trash and you need some new...