May 16, 2018

There are few things in life that please me more than the scent of spring wafting through my house. For the first couple of weeks of mild temperatures hereabouts, there are very few flying insects to infringe upon my pleasure. I open the front and back doors, ensuring to block both from the ability to suddenly swing shut, and let that fresh, sweet oxygenated air flow in.

Some days, the air actually smells fresh. Those days I wish for a ground floor laundry facility and a wonderful clothes line. When we lived out in the country, I would take such a spring day and wash all the sheets and blankets, hanging them out to dry. That night, climbing into a bed in which everything had been freshened? Oh, my goodness, it was the best sleep. Ever.

I miss those days. Where we are now, there is a clothesline—up a hill that is far too steep for me to navigate alone. I haven’t been up there myself for more than a year. Though my husband can make that climb, it needs to be for just one load of laundry per day. He can go up to hang, then up to fetch, and that’s it.

My mother-in-law had a clothes line that was not only on a pulley system, length-wise; but once the line was full, she could pull a cord and raise it into the air, about eight feet up, changing the elevation sufficiently that nothing even hung even close to the ground, and the laundry was in a position to get that beautiful breeze above the fence lines. Yes, I had severe clothes line envy, and haven’t since seen a similar system.

At one point, we had to purchase one of those outdoor clothes hangers. You know the kind I mean, a pole with four arms and plastic line in several tiers forming squares? My kids called it a foreign swing. I had one, and I used it, though I was never completely happy with the way it worked—unless the day was particularly breezy. I also had David string some clothes lines in the basement, and again, while that worked—as did the wooden indoor clothes hanger that folded down like an accordion—I was just spoiled by rural living. Nothing beats sun and fresh air on clothing that is pinned and stretched out, seducing the breeze and the sun to caress and dry it.

Then there was the time I washed and then hung my favorite blouse on that clothesline in the country. I was a teenager at the time, and in Home Economic class that day, I had managed to get a mustard stain on my sleeve. I came home and washed that blouse, hoping for a miracle. But, alas, the stain remained. So, I hung it on the line and didn’t get it in until the next day. Imagine my surprise when I discovered the mustard stain was gone. You can’t convince me otherwise: Mr. Sun fixed that problem for me—the sun, nature’s bleaching agent.

These days, my house isn’t as clean as I could make it whilst in my twenties or thirties or even forties. I do what I can, and my beloved gives me some help. But it still freshens the place when I air it out, making it feel clean, and that helps. Things are certainly tidier here on a day to day basis than when the kids were in residence. Ah, those long-ago days when it was four against one vis-à-vis the housework. And while I do my best, as mobility-challenged as I am, I don’t fret about the state of tidiness as I once did. All I can do is the best I can do, and the best I can do is enough.

Maybe that’s the biggest benefit of getting older. Fewer things seem worth getting upset about. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Love,
Morgan
http://www.morganashbury.com
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury