Clothesline

My mother asks for a clothesline for her birthday or anniversary, and my father installs one to the back of the house when the weather turns pleasant.  Glad to be on summer vacation from elementary school, my sisters and I hang from the swing set as our mother pins up five sizes of t-shirts, pants, and shorts.  When she isn’t looking, we run around the pole and stretch our fingertips to touch the lines. 

When I am taller, my mother demonstrates how to “properly” hang up clothes. 

“It’s better to turn shirts and jeans upside down,” she says, hefting a plastic basket of wet clothes out the door.  “That way, they don’t get so wrinkled.  It also helps to throw them in the dryer for a few minutes beforehand.”

She inspects my work on the line.  “Try to get the very edge of the shirts,” she comments and adjusts a clothespin that has been attached too far over the hem.  “Otherwise, they leave marks and don’t come out until you wash it again.”

As a teenager, I really don’t care about laundry techniques as long as my clothes don’t shrink or change colors.  When I enter my twenties, my mother’s advice begins to sink in, and I apply it when visiting. 

There are ample opportunities to use the clothesline, as it seems my mother does as much laundry for three people in the house as she did for five.  When she stops working, she does a load of laundry every day.  The back door constantly opens and closes as she moves clothes out and in and checks on their dampness. 

A doctor will later tell us that her compulsive laundering is a symptom of the disease—this is one of the things she still knows how to do to be a useful member of the family.  Her attachment to hanging clothes motivates my father to install a drying apparatus when they move to a new town. 

Even when there are just the two of them in the house, she washes clothes every day and eventually wears out the laundry machine.  After buying a new one, my father hides their dirty laundry and gives it to her when enough has amassed for a full load. 

This confuses and frustrates my mother.  “Your dad,” she repeats to me on several occasions while shaking her head, “I don’t know why he does that.”

When my mother uses half a bottle of detergent for one load, my father decides to take over the washing and let her operate the clothesline.  She objects to this new setup for months, always stubbornly protesting, “But I can do that.”

We tell her we know but prevent her from doing the laundry anyway. 

One day, my father gives her a basket of damp clothes to put on the line.  She spends nearly thirty minutes outside, then returns to the laundry room for more clothespins. 

“Carol, what are you doing?” my father asks from around the corner.

“Getting more,” my mother answers, gripping the spare bag of pins.  My father follows her outside and watches from the deck.  After all of that time, only a few shirts have been hung up.  They are draped across the line at the middle and attached by a solid row of wooden pins.  Some of the larger shirts have twenty clothespins lined up across them.  With the new supply of pins, my mother sets to work on the rest of the pile. 

When those shirts and slacks and shorts dry, they are left with a set of discolored spots where the clothespins clamped shut.  The shirts have spots all across the front from my mother’s excessive use of fasteners. 

To keep my mother feeling like her work is important, my father will wear these marks on his clothes for over a year.