Come walk with me an avenue of clotheslines I have known and which provide a bouquet of remembering. Any memories of yours which are evoked as you read, I am affected by, now, as I write, because I have that intent of depth of sharing, because I believe it occurs. A four-minute-mile of the mind.
All of the clotheslines pulley gardens, as well as garments.
The first was in the hot and muggy south of western Ontario. I suppose winters happened but I must have shuddered them early away because the first decade of my life holds only vignettes of warmth. Sun and sandals and cinder driveways and silky grass; a horse-drawn milk wagon and the smell of wet sawdust, outside taps for drinks and dunking head and neck for instant cooling.
That first clothesline pointed toward the ravine which hugely expanded our backyard and gave my first experience of what the Japanese call borrowed landscape. The clothesline, in full sail, captured the winds that galloped along that ravine; along with drying power came the sound of trains from a distant track. Whoever wrote the song The Wayward Wind must have once lived where a breeze and a gully and the plaintive call of a train wove an unforgettable, haunting braid.
Beside the clothesline was the garden; shadows of clothing progressing from passive wet to active dry flapped their silhouettes across that growing space. My father grew peanuts. Peanuts! The astonishment comes from my adult perspective as I wonder where he got plantable peanuts and could I repeat the practice and was he at all surprised at his success: as a child I accepted the fact that my father grew peanuts along with beans and tomatoes and cucumbers. For awhile I thought he grew the earthworms as well. Silly me. Bit by bit I learn to retrieve the sillyness of childhood.
Another clothesline, years later, miles later, began at the edge of the grassy area in front of the house and extended over whatever the terrain is called that separates where people live from a lake. I don’t mean the beach. This was Lake Muskoka with bank and docks rather than much of a beach. I mean the wild and natural woods but not woods, meadow but not meadow, rocks but not all rocks that required thoughtful navigation if navigation at all. More, it drew one to sit beneath a tree or stretch out in field or perch on a rock. And overhead the colours and style and shape and sizes of billowing laundry told family tales while hinting of things not familiar, of things to come.
Clotheslines have strummed a tune as I’ve played house ever since.
If I slipped too far from the moment and failed to note the changes in the boys, their clothing hung to dry would often give me pause to stop and gaze with wonder and interest and amusement at their growing. For the first time I saw the humour in clothing hung on a clothesline. Even the most serious of apparel becomes a clown when dangled. I’m sure I’ve heard hollyhocks laughing at the sight and seen dainty roses nodding to conceal a smile.
Do we all hang clothes in like manner. Do we conserve space and clothespins by double pegging sheets and towels and then have to single hang them to remedy damp corners when the day hasn’t been as warm and sunny and windy as needed for thoroughness.
In India I was a human clothesline with one end of six yards of material held securely under my feet and the other end grasped in each hand, the sari arching out into the wind to dry in minutes.
Rope strung on a pulley allows for ease of hanging from one spot and even offers double the hanging space should it be needed. But there is a charm and a satisfaction to walking the length of a line strung between trees or poles, having the clothes scoop toward earth and needing to find a forked stick to urge them back toward the sky.
‘Harvesting’ those sun dried, wind blown, sky scented sheets and towels and blankets and clothes brings outdoor nature indoors. Life enhancement.
Karen cheerfully pegs her way through life in Victoria BC.
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