After two years of doing our laundry in the supermarket parking lot - twenty minutes from home - Shai went to pick up the washing machine we ordered a few days ago.Two years ago, buying a washing machine wouldn’t have even been worth mentioning - it was something so obvious, such a basic part of life. Privileged or not, having a washing machine nearby never felt like something to think twice about.But right now, as I wait for Shai to return from town, I feel a wave of excitement moving through me - one that goes far beyond the arrival of this square-shaped machine in our home.
Because to me, it’s not just a washing machine.
To me, the moment when Shai drove to bring a washing machine to the land that until recently had no water or electricity - that moment is a symbol of creating reality, an act of creating something out of nothing.
This washing machine is arriving to a piece of land that once had nothing but a dry crater, powdery soil, and wild flammable bushes. It’s walking on a video call with my mom, describing what I imagine could one day exist within all this empty space. It’s filling two 30-lit
er jerrycans every three days in town, twenty minutes away, and pouring them into our caravan tank. It’s sore muscles and frustration - because it’s just too heavy.
It’s a Portuguese man bringing Shai and me a shovel and four buckets, saying, “Start digging a 6-meter-deep blocked well.” It’s waking up too early, when it’s too cold, trying to make progress when you can barely notice a single centimeter of change.
It’s the long days when Shai and I emptied the well from mud and stones, through wind and rain, as I watched him from above - inside what looked like a dungeon at the time - covered in mud, filling one huge bucket after another with stones, mud, and 80-year-old wet straw. Until he reached the bottom of the well and shouted with joy: we made it, we reached the water.
This washing machine is the water that slowly started flowing back into a well that had been blocked for decades. It’s the endless months of a freezing winter without a single drop of rain - until it finally arrived and filled both the well and our pond. It’s the day we brought a water tank up the hill and waited for the first pumping of well water to the top.
It’s that moment, that indescribable joy - of feeling running water, water from the earth, pure water that we’ve gathered until this very moment when we can finally use it.
This washing machine is a year and a half without electricity, without being able to charge a phone fully, to turn on the light for more than a few hours, if at all. It’s living without a fridge, without an oven, without a morning fruit smoothie. It’s endless phone calls with the electricity company, absurd price offers because our land is too far away. This washing machine is also my inner battle - to agree to have a concrete electricity pole standing on our once-untouched land. It’s walking ten minutes up the hill to get a bit of phone signal, digging a trench for the power cable, the first light bulb turning on, connecting to the internet - the opening of possibility, the connection to what’s beyond the here and now.
This washing machine is one more calculation, among the endless financial ones - deciding what’s most important right now.
It’s another step in realizing that nothing in life should ever be taken for granted.
And that in choosing to live the way we do - we keep agreeing to learn that, again and again.
So Shai went to bring our new washing machine. And I stayed home. I almost went with him, but something in my legs rooted itself into the ground and refused to move. “Is it okay if you go alone?” I asked, feeling that familiar discomfort. I didn’t want to send him on this mission by himself - I could feel how both of us were low on energy since morning, and I didn’t want to add to his load. But my body signaled clearly - I wasn’t going anywhere.
It’s something familiar in our flow, since we moved here - since we chose to live on what feels like a small island in the southwest of Portugal. That fear of leaving one another alone within the complexity, the endless tasks. Since we’ve been here, it has often felt like - if I’m not there with him, then probably no one is. It’s just the two of us on this island.
But something inside me feels different this time - I can recognize that I’ve gotten used to the feeling of discomfort, but that it actually belongs to the past. Right now, as Shai drives away and I stay, I can feel his life energy, his strength. I know it mostly makes him happy - to go, to be with himself, to spare me the ride. I feel that the story of “it’s just the two of us on this island” isn’t quite true anymore.
There really are other people around us that we can rely on - and it feels natural now. Actually, they were always there, but now that our heads are finally above water, it feels simpler.
I can feel the change - it’s tangible, I can grasp it.
So Shai left, and I stayed. The moment the car disappeared from sight, the energy in my body completely shifted. Something about my absolute presence made my actions suddenly feel more relevant. Because if I don’t do it - no one will. That feeling of aloneness - the deep, resonant kind that comes with choosing this life - rang in my ears. In these moments, I feel that if I don’t act for my own good, I’ll have to shut everything down.Because otherwise, the ringing will drive me mad - it’s either I listen, or I cover my ears, close my eyes, and try to sleep until I’m not alone again.
My body was charged with energy - I suddenly wanted to do the workout I couldn’t even think of in the morning, to write, to organize my closet, to sit in meditation, to do my nails. I felt my commitment to my own needs in the simplest way - without stories or struggle, just movement toward what I need and want.
When no one is watching, the difficulty can easily dissolve the suffering.
When there’s no one to listen to my story - it’s just me, hearing how much power I actually have to change.
Shai came back - smiling, with the washing machine in his hands. He too, in his own solitude, found the power to change.
Both of us understand that we’ve crossed another threshold in our independence here.
Our dirty laundry will now be washed right here.
We have water, electricity, people, and a washing machine.
We have what we need to get our clothes dirty with such freedom -
because between us, right here, we can clean the mess that forms,
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