February 13th, 2025

“Get in Rosie, we’re starting a new life,” I tell the fawn-colored pit-bull who has jumped into the passenger side of my Subaru.
Her person is calling her name.
Parked in front of me, a Subaru spilling with snowboard packs, a foam mattress.

Mine spills blue mesh sacks, bundled linens from the hotel, unloaded three at a time.
Plowing through the push door of the laundromat.

60 lbs, the xxl washer advertises. I can’t tell how much I carry in my arms.

What is 60 lbs? A ten-year-old? A bushel of apples. “Up to 6 baskets,” a sign indicates. A volume estimate. A weight estimate.
“Asclán,” is the Gaelic word for “as much as one can carry in their arms.”
I felt this word in my bones the first time i read it. I am the kind who fills my arms, with as much as I can carry. The ant who sees the crumb ten times it size and says, “this one.”
“Can I help?” You say, when the car is loaded. When the house is unpacked. I smile.
“You coulda,” is my reply, smiling. Often wryly.
Asclàn, a unit of measurement, is both a volume and weight. It is three blue mesh sacks of strangers laundry. It is three bags of groceries. It is an industrial size copier. It is a Rosie, ready to go in the passenger side.  It is you.
My last name, Carman, is meant for “one who pulls the cart,” in English. A name I also feel in my bones.

“You are built to pull a cart, to lift a heavy load and bear it, to haul up the long slope, and so am I, peasant bodies, earthy, solid shapely dark glazed clay pots that can stand on the fire.” - Marge Piercy

Carman. There was some question of its authenticity once. My namesake grandfather conceived out of wedlock. Who’s to say the name in the birth certificate wasn’t a government assigned patriarch?
A DNA test cleared the uncertainty. A line rife with cart bearers. Peasant stock.

The secondary namesake, a more sanguine representational running along the matriarchal branches: Lee.
The meadow-dwellers.
If I was born to pull a cart, I exist in body that is also guided to frolic. Asclàn is bouquet of flowers, a spoonful of honey, a lamb.

Today it is laundry. Tomorrow I hope to frolic.