Sitting in a laundry basket of wet washing – a story

Yesterday my blog reading took me from one page to another and eventually led me to one of my own stories.  I am not sure what it illustrates or why it started to peck at the inside of my head until I wrote it out  but yesterday it became demanding so here you are.  This story is for Terry. Inspired by Julie. 

To carry a baby and a basket of washing is a juggle.  When I was a very young mother I had both in spades.  Babies and washing that is. Plus juggling when you think about it.   Often I put the baby in the washing basket with the washing and carried them both outside to the clothesline together.  So on this summer day in rural New Zealand I hefted a basket of washing and its piggy back of grumpy baby through the back door.  The trees were alive with birds who sounded like children and the fenced farmers back yard was alive with children who moved like birds. This was where my favourite flowers grew and all the herbs I had transplanted from the last house.  I had only been married a few years but we had moved around so often in that time that I had lost the nack of making new friends. So my world had shrunk to this yard and these children and actually that was OK.

The washing line stood crooked and old, in the yard.  Already it was full of a brilliant array of tiny clothes and white nappies. I loved to hang out washing. I loved the art of it, the exact loops, the sway of the fabrics, the combination of colours and shapes. The daily remaking of this wrickety fingerpainting of a task. Especially in the summer when the coolness of the wet fabrics mocked the heat of the day.  And it was a hot summer morning. There is a cycle to laundry being carried out, hung up, brought down, and carried  in that is soothing in its ease.  It marks a day’s beginning.

I carefully put the over burdened basket on the grass under the line and reached for baby. On the lawn, in the shade,  there was a play pen waiting. He had just begun to crawl so  I put baby in there. I poured a little water from a jug into a tray for him to play with. Then I began to unpeg dry warm fragrant tiny beautiful clothing from the lines, folding them and stacking them onto the laundry table next to the basket of new wet washing.  My Mother always said don’t bend over more than you have to.  So I had a table under the line. As I took a piece of dry clothing and set it down on the table, I would pick up a wet one from the basket and hang it in its place using the same pegs. Not wasting any movement.  Leave the pegs on the line she would say so they are waiting for the next piece. My summer dress billowed in the slight breeze.  My bare feet felt the green in the grass.  You can feel green you know.  Dry to the table, swoop down to the basket, wet up to the line, peg, peg, unpeg, unpeg, dry to the table, swoop down to the basket, wet up to the line, peg, peg. I used the old rhythm of all the women who had gone before me.

I kept an eye on my children though my mind had begun to slip its moorings. The ache in my back was still there and I wondered at it. My inner eye looked deep inside to see what was causing the unbalance.  I had been pregnant often enough to know that something hidden was stirring. Everyone knows that mothers have three eyes, well actually four. Two that you can see in the front of your head. Mine are blue. Pale blue actually. Then Mothers have the eye in the back of your head to see what the kids are up to, then the inner eye that just Knows what they are up to.  Well one eye was on baby, one on the washing and the eye in the back of my head was watching babies brothers. Playing in the vege garden. My Self accompanied by my inner eye was drifting down.

Children’s play was the soundtrack of my days. My two little boys had begun a very simple game where they  dipped water out of the water barrel, then ran with little steps on short legs, across the lawn ,stooped over so the sand castle buckets did not spill too much. They then poured the sloshing water  into a dip in the garden. Dropping the buckets they kneaded it very fast with their feet until it was a mud puddle, then they grabbed each others arms and as one boy they would both jump up and down as hard as they could spraying mud all over themselves and each other. Shrieking as loudly as they could was part of the game. This had to be done fast because the water drained fast. Then off they would go with the buckets to get more water and do it all over again.

Almost lunchtime I thought. I can hose them down.  Then nap time.   Too young for school but not too young for mischief. Nap time for the lot of them. My mouth moved slightly at the thought of that hours peace.  This was when I did the housework at top speed and maybe got a sit down with my book.  My Mother always said rest when the baby rests. I bent to pick up another piece of wet washing, it was a wet table cloth. White, everything was white in this load. Never, ever mix your colours with your whites Mum would say. I thought about some of the things My mother had said.   Leave your hair long.  Tie it up. Make me a cup of tea. Boil the potatoes for a few minutes before you roast them. Butter and the cream from the top of the milk for mashed potatoes. Don’t trust anything anyone says after midnight.  Boil the eggs in cold water.  Never use cornflour to make a roux. Hold your head up. Stand up straight.  It takes two to tango. Keep your knees and ankles together when you are sitting.  Smooth your skirt before you sit down.

Without even thinking I put this wet tea table cloth completely over my head. I could still see light, but I was breathing in cool wet air. Then I started to cry. I stepped backwards and half fell, half  sat in the wet washing basket, my knees together and ankles to the side. I  could feel the cold damp of the wet clothes seeping through my dress and I cried and cried. The children’s hysterical game slipped away, the baby’s gurgles became muted and I wished I was not there anymore.  I did not want to be anywhere else or dead or anything. I was just so tired. So terribly tired. I just wanted it all to stop for a day or an hour or something so I could catch my breath.  So I could get a handle on what was happening so I could reach for my rudder, it was all out of control.  I was terribly young. I was 24 that year.  I remember thinking I did not want to BE anymore. I wanted to take my Self off and rest for a while.

My Mother was dying you see. She had been dying for a few years now.  She would die soon they said.  She lived away at the beach, 6 hours drive away,  so every two weeks now I had been packing up my children to go and see her.  My father would drive up from the beach and collect us and we would drive back down the island together.  Through the night so the children would sleep. I would stay a week to help with Mum  and do all the things that needed doing, then he would drive me back to tend to my husband and put meals in the freezer and weed the garden and put food in jars and get the washing up to date and the house clean.  Then Dad would come and we would do it all over again. We had been doing  this for months Dad and I, the intervals away from Mum getting shorter and shorter. My husband  was a busy man you see. He worked very hard. He could not come with me.

My mother was dying, slowly slipping into the holy waters  and I did not think I could bear it. I sat there on that beautiful late summer day, with my rear in a plastic basket of clean wet washing, a  cloth over my head, my head on my knees,  my hands stuffing tears back down my throat, my children playing under the trees. I howled with my mouth open, absolutely silently.  Not one thought in my head other than the feel of the wet washing and the terror of losing my mother and wishing I could feel neither.

Soon my tears wore me out as tears do and I came back to where I was. Young as I was I WAS the bloody mother and the bloody daughter. And I felt bloody as Mum sometimes said.  With my head still covered I checked my third and fourth eyes and the children were still where I had left them. I pushed the tea table cloth up to the top of my head unwilling to give up its cool shade and  looked at noisy chubby baby. He was still sitting in his play pen, splashing at the tray of water, watching  his brothers.

I turned to babies brothers and there they were still heaving with laughter jumping up and down in the mud, but now they both had  items of clothing on top of their heads. They had ripped off their sodden clothes and now they had shorts pulled over the tops of their heads,  the waist bands slipping slowly down into their  eyes, with their T-shirts on top of the shorts, their heads tilting further and further back so that they could see. Leaping in the mud and shrieking. Screaming. Laughing brilliantly. Like little dirty suns. The eldest one saw me see him and laughing pointed to this new head gear then pointed to mine.  His grin as  bright as a giggle. Delighted that I had given him such a grand idea.

I sat for a while longer and watched them, filthy children are always joyful.  Filthy clothes can be washed. It was almost lunchtime, then nap time, walks, then dinner then bath then bed.  We would be travelling again in a few days.  I needed to call home. Then I rose with a sound, you know that sound, it is not a grunt or a sigh, just a rising sound.  An ‘up we go’ sound. I hung the table cloth on the line and put out  the rest of the smashed and crinkled and fast drying washing, put the neat piles of dry washing into the basket, brushed down the baby and loaded him in and walked  back inside to make lunch.

…

Good morning.  I hope you don’t mind a pause in the farmy.

Many people are sad much of the time. Through illness or loneliness or grief. One thing I know though  is that it will change. The windscreen wipers of life will slowly move back the other way. The air will cool and you can breathe for a bit.  Tomorrow will come. Now, is not how it will always be. We just need to keep our eyes open and our hearts wide awake.  There is always joy there. Maybe only a little, maybe just a smudge of joy. But it will be enough for the moment. As we move ourselves and shove ourselves, with the utmost determination towards the changes.

Mum always said, Buck up Celi, you will scare the horses with a face like that.

And now I can hear Daisy bawling. And it is not even 6am. Cows can tell the time though.  So I will heave myself back up out of the past and back to work we go.   Good work. It is always better to write these things I think. So thank you for undulging me. And thank you Julie and Terry for leading me.

celi