kniteracy | The Sisterhood of the Washing Line (Reply)

This morning, because I miss her and I hadn't in awhile, I phoned the Talis Fairy, who's busy settling into a new house and unpacking and getting used to a new layout rather than the house in Bristol she's lived in for some time.

I phoned ostensibly to thank her for a little packet of seeds she sent via

bardling; they're made by Allinson and are a mixture of pumpkin, sesame, poppy, and some other kinda seed, used to flavour bread, and I used them the next time I made bread, and I loved them very much and so did everyone else who had some of that bread! But really, I just wanted to hear her musical voice and talk about life for a few minutes with a kindred spirit.

So I asked her how things were going, and things are going well, which was good to hear. And then she said, "To tell you the truth, I'm all excited about my new washing line!" She went on to tell me that she had a new, long washing line that stretched from the house to the kids' climber, and that she hadn't used her tumble dryer since they'd moved in, and it made her feel great to be hanging clothes out again, because the wind and the sunshine do all the work and it's just terrific that she hasn't been using the tumble dryer.

And you know, I was thrilled to hear it, because one of the new things I have in my life that's made things very happy and shiny is my new washing line, made by

filceolaire for me during Saturday's cabling debacle. It attaches to both the back wall of the house and the back garden with pulleys, so I can hang laundry from the back stoop without going down the steep stairs into the shared garden which our downstairs neighbors have made so nice and I haven't touched ever. Since Saturday, I've been going through laundry like a house afire, except for those couple of rainy days we've had, and something that always felt like a chore to me when I was a kid now feels joyful and life-affirming.

My mother always preferred to hang clothes out, even after she got her first tumble dryer in the mid-70s. She said they smelled better. I suppose I knew somewhere in my heart that this was actually true, but in the US, the land of big tumble dryers, absolutely no time to mind washing, and heavily-perfumed fabric softener sheets, it just seemed easier to do it in the machine.

I talked the other day about the rain spell and putting laundry out and bringing it back in because of rain. But I didn't tell you the thing I discovered while hanging up that load of washing: this job is not a chore. I talked about hanging, then pulling back in, then discovering the rain had started. But what I didn't tell you was that the whole thing took about ten minutes. This morning, I hung that load of towels back out: they'd been on a rack in the bathroom and still weren't quite dry. About twenty minutes ago, I went out to the back stoop, pulled the already-dry towels off the line, and replaced them with a new load of clothes that I'd washed this morning. It took less than two hours for them to dry on the line. This job is not a chore, I thought, as I brough my towels in, towels that, yes, smell of English wind and English sun, which, I'm sorry y'all, is just really nice and those of you who haven't experienced it will just have to take my word for it.

I remember, in my early twenties, going through a department store with a friend who admitted she was embarrassed because she liked looking at refrigerators and other appliances. I remember replying that of course it was embarrassing: how dorky, to be interested in kitchen appliances. But I don't feel that way anymore, and I haven't for a long time. How ridiculous, I think, not to be interested in these things. Why wouldn't you care about your refrigerator? Why wouldn't you care about the smell of perfect, sun-blessed and air-dried laundry? Why wouldn't you jump up and down with joy for a new washing line, put up with love and care, and useful, useful, useful?

The Fairy said she liked imagining all the women, down through the ages, putting things out on the washing line. I leaned over my back stoop and saw rows and rows of washing lines, from my end of the street to the curve at the primary school. Some full, some empty. The garden walls are too high to converse over, I realised. But sometime in the past, I'm sure friendships and conversations aplenty were begun over the washing line, because I watched my mother do it in our back yard in South Carolina in the early 70s. It baffled me, in my 20s, when my 60something-year-old mother, who owned a perfectly good tumble dryer, would go out to the back yard with a load of washing every couple of days and hang it up if the weather was fine. She only used the tumble dryer if it was cold or rainy. "It's just better this way," she said. My mother, who hated to cook and never baked a loaf of bread, believed in the magic of wind and sun every bit as much as I do today when I pull that load of washing in off my spiffy new pulley-enabled washing line.

My conversation with the Talis Fairy moved on to other things, her house and all the beautiful spaces in it, our upcoming challenges, schools and children and the promise of sock patterns and hugs to come-- but right before we said goodbye, she said, "Hooray for the Sisterhood of the Washing Line."

I agree. Hooray for a mild late-summer day, hooray for wind and sun and the most beautiful light in the world (trust me on this).

Hooray for the Sisterhood of the Washing Line.