Gifts from the Clothesline

There is a slight wind today.

I didn’t think a clothesline was a challenge. I can set up an internet server and make my computers run together in an office network. If I work at it, I think I could adapt the printer to print from both of my computers. I have a Global Positioning System when I drive, and a blue tooth will input calls from my cell phone. A clothesline, now that’s a different story.

The first thing I had to do was study the different types of clotheslines. Believe it or not, there are several kinds, and one has the shape of a giant umbrella. It requires a post hole, cement, and strength, which I do not have. I would have to hire someone to dig the hole and pour the cement. Do not tell anyone but I am broke. It is one of the main reasons I was looking at getting a clothesline.

The electricity used by a dryer is considerable, and I think I can hang out my clothes and save money for other things like groceries. You can cover up the real reason for the clothesline using solar and wind power to save the environment. Even grocery bills are lower when you are a vegan. Eliminating meat, cheese and milk products saved me a bundle. Being an environmentalist suits me better than the truth which is, a single senior trying to survive on a Canada Pension and a part-time job. However I digress; back to the clothesline.

Some are clotheslines run between two pulleys. You stand in one spot and hang the clothes on the line and push them out. You need elevation to make it work. I remember one my mother had, and she could hang out the clothes from inside the back porch through an open window. It was two stories high and attached to a very large electric pole. I don’t have a very large pole, and I don’t have a very tall ladder to reach the top to install the pulley and then string the clothesline from it.

Remembering Mom and her clothesline makes me sad. She used to write to me after she had hung out the wash. I think that was a sort of routine for her. She must have written to me on her wash day, usually Monday mornings. Her letters always started with the weather and the condition of her clothes, drying on the line. She lived on Prince Edward Island, and I lived in Ontario at that time. I was busy with a house full of teenagers and working full time. There was not a clothesline insight and I considered myself lucky if I had the laundry within three or four loads of being finished. That’s my excuse anyway for the letter I sent her one day.

“Mom, if you have nothing more to talk about than the weather and your clothesline why don’t you save the stamp.”

How I wish I could call her and ask for her forgiveness. I see it now. I see how sometimes a routine is the only thing that keeps you sane. I see that just hanging out the wash can mean having money for offering at church or having a dollar for a Tim Horton’s coffee. Not that a dollar would even buy a coffee now. Why do I have to be old and broke to understand? I am grateful for the time it takes to hang out the wash and for slowing down, long enough to remember.

I remember my Grandmother and her clothesline, which stretched over the driveway from the house to the barn and was pushed up by two poles with a v-shaped cut out in the top of the poles to lift the line when the load got too heavy. She would not hang out anything stained or anything that needed mending. That went on the rack in the back porch and the stains and the mending were worked on before the laundry the next week. We stayed with her for a month every summer, and that meant that her laundry went from two people to eight. Laundry was a source of pride for my grandmother. If she had a stain on her tablecloth that would not budge with all of her cleaning tricks she would cut the stain out and replace it with a patch of linen from the edge of a worn-out tablecloth. It has been years since I remembered Mom and her beautiful wash.

I finally found a clothesline that retracts like a yo-yo when not in use. It requires a hook at two similar heights a required distance apart I finally found a place on the garage and a tree that made this system work. The length of line I have will not allow me to sort and hang in the proper order. Lights with lights and darks with dark and the personals hidden in between. I have to hang and double up at times. It is only a small line.

I want to say this simple system only took a few minutes, but it took a couple of days to get it right. I can’t imagine using this system year-round. I remember when my brother was a baby, and he had squares of soft white flannel for diapers. In the winter, they froze solid, and I can still see Mom’s icy red hands as she handed me the stiff slices of flannel.

“Set up the ironing board. I’m going to have to iron some of these diapers dry I’ll need them tonight.”

Imagine no backup dryer and no back up disposable packet of perfectly folded, throw away diapers.

Clothespins were next on my list. My grandmother used clothespins with no moving parts. It was a piece of carved hardwood, and it had a slot in the middle. Fold a piece of clothing over the line and push, and the peg held it snug. My Mother had clothespins that had a wire spring between two pieces of wood. I found some exactly like hers and was happy to buy a package. I needed three, and by now the cost of this clothesline and pegs was mounting.

Today it is all worth the trouble and the cost. The clothesline is up, and the clothes are drying, I look with satisfaction at the line. Mom’s face smiles back at me. I thought I had forgotten how she looks. I’ve gone to the cemetery, and I’ve sorted through the picture albums, but I could never really feel I remembered the real Mom.

Today I found her and my grandmother and lots of other women who hung out the wash in the past. The other day the man across the street from me was hanging out his work shirts and jeans. I think I’ll go over and see what memories he pegged on the line with his clothes.