Performing My Ablutions: A Millennial’s Story

Summer Gaasadelen is a fellow Millennial five years out of college. A mother and talented writer, she shares her reflections on being a Millennial and where it has brought her today. A beautiful story ensues below with a powerful life lesson.

ablution: n. 1. a cleansing with water or other liquid, especially as a religious ritual. 2. (often pl) the act of washing (esp in the phrase perform one's ablutions).

I was born in 1989 in Colorado Springs. I grew up with the concept that I could be “whatever I wanted to be” when I grew up. A message that was passed to me from teachers, politicians, famous people on daytime talk shows, Disney-Pixar movies, and from a propaganda-like ubiquitousness of inspirational posters in classrooms, stores, and homes.

“Whatever I wanted to be” was not a clear picture, but it was big, and important, and it was going to change the world.

If I was going to achieve my big important goals, I needed to get out of Colorado Springs and experience the world. I couldn’t have a normal-person job and spend my days cleaning my house and driving my kids to their activities. Normal was not part of “whatever I wanted to be.”

I ended up at a little private liberal arts college in the midwest, which was one of the “Colleges That Change Lives.” I learned that I loved writing. My “whatever I wanted to be” became a little clearer. I wanted to be John Steinbeck.

A parallel story: I was born in 1989 in Colorado Springs. When I was five my dad built me a playhouse in the backyard. It had a real roof and linoleum floor. It was pink. I could sweep the floor and cook in the play kitchen, and I spent my summer playing house.

My mom would tell me “You’re going to be a good mommy when you grow up.” There was never a point in my life where I wondered if I wanted kids, as long as I can remember I was going to grow up and be a good mommy.

Cue the question millennials are trying to figure out: Can I really be “whatever I want to be”? Or in other terms: Can I really have it all?

Owen and I decided we were going to make it happen. We got married three months after graduating college, and moved to Iowa City, where he was enrolled in a counseling psychology program with a 60-hour work week and a living stipend. I enrolled as a continuing education student so I could figure out how to be John Steinbeck. I worked part time at a University café making sandwiches.

My classes ended, and so did my student job. We needed more money. I found a job with the Princeton Review tutoring the GRE. It wasn’t enough. I got a job working with people with disabilities, mostly cleaning their houses. I spent every minute I wasn’t working, or taking care of our domestic life, trying to write a novel. There weren’t very many minutes to spare.

I was frustrated, or as others have put it, “entitled.” I was told that if I did well in college I could be “whatever I wanted to be,” and it wasn’t happening. My college didn’t teach me the first thing about actually using my college education. There were “help wanted” signs everywhere for unskilled labor. My two jobs kept me working in the early mornings, late at night, and on weekends, to support our life, and I kept working toward being “whatever I wanted to be” in the minutes between jobs. There was no relaxing or catching a breath. My life was work like hell, crash into a jumbled lump on the futon for an hour before bed, sleep, work again.

The Iowa Writers’ Workshop offered a summer poetry writing class with Mark Levine, and my writing sample was accepted. During the class I read a poem with the words “I perform my ablutions,” and the word “ablution” started making its way into my consciousness. “Performing my ablutions” is dramatic. It’s bad poetry. I like it. Cleaning the house is just doing the chores, and that sucks, but performing ablutions sounds important.

The class ended. I kept writing, when I could, but it was a lot less than I hoped. I decided to try for a full-time job thinking that at least the regular hours would give me the opportunity to write in the evenings. I also wanted something that would require a college education. I got lucky. Out of a large pool of applicants, someone at a nearby private liberal arts college liked my writing and long-story-short, I got the job.

I worked full time as a writer/project manager in the marketing and communication office by day, and I was way too tired to be a novelist by night. Domestic life was more work than I had realized when I decided I wanted to be John Steinbeck. I was supposed to be out changing the world, and all I could handle was making dinner, and there were nights I couldn’t handle that.

The parallel story: I still wanted kids, and I was acutely aware that fertility isn’t guaranteed. Owen and I weren’t willing to risk waiting until we were established to have kids. We decided to keep working toward our goals with kids in tow.

Pregnancy was a humbling experience for me. Morning sickness, a feeling that most women experience at some point in their lives, kicked my butt. Nonetheless, I continued doing creative writing on weekends until 6 months into my pregnancy, when I submitted an application to the Writers’ Workshop M.F.A. program, still hoping I’d get to have it all. It was rejected.

Meanwhile, the word ablution started to creep into my way of being and way of thinking. The power of ablution is not a single act, but a repetition of acts as part of a routine, and that routine connects a person to the sacred. Routine and normalcy, I realized, were actually nice, and not just nice, but empowering. The most content people I know are the people who built me a playhouse, told me I’d be a good mommy, cleaned the house, and drove me to my activities.

Slowly, by performing my ablutions, I am transforming. What I want to do, more than anything I’ve ever wanted, is to live a normal life and focus on my kid. And really, who says that performing my ablutions won’t change the world?

But, I’d be lying if I tried to end my story there. As it turns out, I’m not very good at performing ablutions.

I have contamination anxiety that makes performing ablutions an emotionally complex task. Take for instance, my kitchen sink. In my mind the kitchen sink is a petri dish for every dirty thing that we try to wash off of ourselves—you don’t need to tell me why it’s illogical, I already know that stainless steel does not actually behave like a petri dish. Anyways, I have rules about the sink. If food falls in the sink, it’s dead to me. Dish rags should not be left in the sink, where they will remain moist and become bacteria rags. You would think that would give me motivation to clean sink, but just the opposite: I’m afraid of sink and want minimal contact with it, rarely cleaning it at all.

There are other examples like this one around the house, like the cat litter, and the shelf above our washing machine, where Owen tossed a plastic stick that he used to unclog a pipe once. That stick will probably stay on that shelf until after we move and it becomes one of those things that the people before you left on a shelf.

After our daughter was born, my anxiety around cleaning became worse. When I found myself yelling at Owen for the millionth time about leaving a wet rag in the sink, I decided I needed to figure out how to chill.

Humans eat. Humans poop. Humans make a lot of messes, and humans clean them up. No one taught millennials the power of ablution. It’s something we have to teach ourselves, so that we can love our lives, so that we can accept being human, and love being human.

What I’ve finally come to accept is that the most effective way to combat contamination anxiety is exposure. For me, ablutions like cleaning my sink regularly aren’t just about the cleanliness, I also need them to keep my anxiety from taking over my life, and for that matter Owen’s and our daughter’s lives.

By practicing my ablutions, I am practicing letting things go. I am practicing breathing deeper and making time for walks. I still want to write a novel, eventually. The difference is that in the meantime, I’ve decided that a life of performing ablutions is worthwhile. I don’t have to achieve my goal for my life to be worth living. I don’t have to spend ninety percent, or even ten percent of my time working toward my goal. My life is worth living right now.