The Reason I Love The Clothesline, Even In Summer

It's 100 degrees in the shade of my back porch. A true hot summer day in Texas. The heat index makes it feel 104 and I am sure its hotter than that at my clothesline. While hanging up a load of whites, all in order of course, Emery's tee shirts all lined up one right after the other like small sails flapping in the breeze. Whites all on one line, colors on another. Socks hung in matched pairs. Towels hung by color and then by size. I like to see it neat, and maybe I am a little compulsive about it, or maybe I just like things orderly. Whichever it is, it is. But, while out there, sweat was rolling down my brow into my eyes, the corner of my apron serving as a hankie to wipe my face dry. My arms glistening with tiny beads of sweat. It was feeling horrifically hot out there and I wondered, why was I doing this. We could have a clothes dryer, now we even have a gas line to hook one up to, but I don't want one, not really. Why do I hang clothes up in the heat, in the cold when my hands feel like they are going to freeze right off ? Its because of what I see when I am out there, what I hear too. Birds singing, blue sky above, the changes in things from one day to the next. The clouds above or lack of them. The insects that are around at whatever time of the year it is. And one must not forget that I am getting loads of vitamin D while I am out there hanging row after row. I suspect that it takes me 45 minutes or more to hang 3 loads of wash out, that's a fair amount of sunshine loaded with D. And then there is the aerobic exercise of hanging wash. Lugging it out there is like lifting weights and then the up and down, reaching down to the basket, up to the line that is over my head. I thought more about the "why" of this domestic chore of choice and knew that living "green" is an aspect of it too. No dryer, no fossil fuel used for however long it takes to dry clothes. Electricity uses fossil fuel too. In addition, Emery and I have this commitment to live simply. Live with what we need and less living with what we might think we want or what people insist you have to have in order to live what they call a "quality life". We seem to like doing things the old fashioned way more often than not. Of course we enjoy having a car, the computer, the phones, and the stereo and things like the refrigerator and washing machine and most of those things I mentioned have little to do with need, but only to do with want and we acknowledge that.

In a couple of months I will be thrilled to be hanging clothes as the autumn breeze blows and I watch birds fly overhead on their migration south. I will linger at the line as I watch leaves turning color, and see the squirrels scamper about gathering pecans and acorns for the winter. I will sense a need to clean the wood stove out when I see the goats putting on a winter undercoat and feel the need to get the winters wood supply stacked. I will notice the changing of the seasons while I hang the clothes and enjoy the first cool day to its fullest. I will come in the house feeling refreshed and want to sit at the spinning wheel for a bit, spinning wool for winter socks. The clothesline is my connecting place to the times and seasons and the subtle changes in nature. That's why I put up with the job when the heat is bearing down on me and in the winter when the icy cold stings my hands and instantly freezes the clothes.

I guess when it comes down to it, even in summer, it is the place that keeps me grounded to this simple life we live.