The Carrot Stick Lady

A story for you:

As a podcast if you would like to listen in:

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‘Tell us the story of the Carrot Lady, Grandma,’ they say.

They are like birds or butterflies or crickets – woodland nymphs, these children with my grandfather’s eyes and my mother’s curly hair: hovering, fluttering, their angels lazing in the shadows. Their wings – the children’s wings – barely concealed. They skitter – multiple personalities all in a minute. Sun. Clouds. Sun.

‘In the old days’, I begin. How did my days get old. I don’t add. At least – it is not the olden days – the olden days are very long ago. ‘OK. When Grandma was only little, not everyone had a washing machine like you do’. I start this old story. I feel my age for a minute then forget again. Even though this story starts with dirty washing; it is a food story. Most of the children’s Grandma stories have food in them. The food stories are reeled out like a cast of dubious characters in a short story that never ends. Can that even be a thing? Of course it can. Life does not end until it ends, right? It is the short in that sentence that might be an error.

Food is the love language of children, so food stories are a natural progression. They’ll know them. They will make them. Eat them. Discuss them. Then they will pass them on. Feed people. Nourish people. Talk food to future generations I will never meet. 

‘Like Grandma’s World Famous in Wellington Creamy Chicken Pasta’, I say. 

‘Did we eat that already, Grandma?’

 ‘Yes – don’t you remember, I made it for you last night.’ 

‘Oh, the Pink Pasta,’ they say – already there has been a discussion. The rename will last a generation, I think. 

‘Do you want to know how to make it?’

‘No.’

The tiny one is busy pasting a Pokemon tattoo on my wrist. ‘Can’t we do that with warm water on the wash cloth?’

‘No,’ he says, pressing the cold wet flannel shaped like a cat’s paw even harder onto my wrist, the wet towel covering the scrap of paper covering the inky cartoon character. Do they even call them cartoons anymore?

‘But you could learn this recipe. Then you can make it yourself.’

‘I am only four.’

‘Four is a good time to start cooking.’

‘But I want to hear the Carrot Lady story.’

‘And you will. Just hold your horses. I’ll be quick. Grandma’s World Famous in Wellington Chicken Pasta, now called Pink Pasta.’ The older child nods. I am launching ahead, I need to download this recipe into their ears before I can reach way back for the story of the Carrot Lady; though we – me and my siblings – used to call her the Washing Lady. Generations of renaming, words upon words.

‘OK. Creamy Chicken Dill Pasta. In a big heavy-bottomed frying pan, heavy-bottomed like your Grandma’s.’ Their attention sparks, the fingers on my wrist pause – they look around hopefully to see if their Dadda, my son, heard the bottom joke. My words slide into the pause. ‘In the pan, sweat the onions and garlic in a little oil. When the onions start to stick to the pan, throw in a little wine from Grandma’s glass, not too much Grandma needs her sustenance, then add butter and the chopped chicken until browned. Pour in a couple of cans of tomato. Once chicken is cooked down, add cooked pasta and cream. Sprinkle with dill and salt and pepper. Don’t overcook.’

‘I don’t like dill.’

‘You did last night.’

‘Oh.’

‘Get back to the Carrot Lady, Grandma.’

‘OK. In the old days, not everyone had a washing machine, let alone an electric washing machine.’

‘You said that bit already.’ The wet cloth is released from my wrist, and we both inspect the multi-colored robot on my wrist.

‘I gave you a robot one,’ he says.

‘Huh. I thought it was going to be a Pokemon.’

‘I don’t have any Pokemon tattoos,’ he says, mournful.

‘Do you think I should get a real tattoo?’ I ask.

‘This is a real tattoo’, he answers.

I continue to tell them that – in the old days – we did not have a dryer either. We did not even know anyone with a dryer. We did not even know dryers existed. Everyone hung their washing on the clothesline out the back of the wash house to dry in the sun. Just having a washing machine would be a good step.

My godmother down the road had a mangle that screwed between two tubs in her washhouse, and she would hand wash in one tub – using a big washing stick. Then with the same sturdy stick jam it through the mangle, rotating the rollers with the other hand, into the other tub with clean water waiting, then switch the mangle to go backwards and push the rinsed washing back through. Then she would cart the heavy load outside in a willow basket and hang it on the line. She would flip the basket over to dry too. Her smooth well used old washing stick she propped on the windowsill to dry.

Later in the day, the washing was taken off the line, and it was laid back into the washing basket in a way that did not create wrinkles.

Then the next day was ironing day. So if the washing was ever so slightly damp, it made ironing the next day easier. Not exactly damp.  More cold than damp – it is hard to describe. But you can imagine how that could go wrong. If you didn’t get to ironing day on time.

My grandmother had a big round pale blue metal tub on legs that plugged in and would wash the clothes for her using the electricity. We called it the wish-wish. She filled it with hot water from a hose that Pa attached to the hot tap. She added grated soap, and when she turned it on, a big paddle wished and washed back and forth to clean the washing. It even had a lid. If you forgot it, it would wash your clothes for hours. But there would be trouble if that happened. When it was done, you switched the paddle off, rolled it close to the big concrete tubs and with her trusty washing stick; hooked the clothes out one by one and stuffed them through the rollers between the tubs to wring out all the hot soapy water. When we got older and flew on the plane all by ourselves to visit Grandma we would do the washing for her, it was heavy work.  In gumboots on the wet concrete floor. Our hair tied up out of the way of the rollers.  Hands red from either hot water or cold water. Stick in hand. The washing stick was an important implement in the washing woman’s arsenal. It could be used as a weapon in a pinch. It was strangely satisfying in the big wash house out the back of the house, wielding Grandma’s stick, surrounded in soapy steam, out of everyone’s way. But I don’t say all this to the children. It is too much information when we haven’t even got to the carrots yet.

‘So, we had a wish-wish like Grandma’s, but my mother was not always well enough to do the washing. I think she was waiting until we grew up enough to help her. But in the meantime, we needed to have the clothes cleaned.

‘What was your Mum sick of?’

‘We had a car crash, and she was in bed for a long time.’

‘You mean the time you got found in a ditch with a scar on your face.’ The older child remembered this family story.

‘Yes, that time. My Mum had scars on her face, too. That’s why we wear seat belts now’. If ever there was a teaching moment.

‘You were matching.’

We all pause to think about this for a minute. I have never thought of us – my mother and I – as having matching scars. I mean, we did not match. She is long dead now, died young, a lot younger than I am now, and certainly not up to discussing matching scars moldering down there in her grave. I hate to think about dead people in their coffins with their hair and nails still growing. But I don’t say this out loud either.

‘So, the lady down the road did our washing for us. We would take the big willow basket of laundry down to her house on the corner. My sisters and I would put the washing basket in our red wagon and tow it down there, and she would return our clothes a few days later; washed, dried, ironed, and wrapped in brown butcher’s paper with string, to keep the whites clean.

We were not rich or anything – it was more about women helping other women. We would come home from school, and the Washing Lady was sitting under the window beside Mum’s bed – the teapot cooling on the side table – chatting about this and that and listening to the sea breezes whisper in through the doors.

The kitchen would be all cleaned up; she would have the next load of washing in the red wagon for us  and always a glass jar of freshly cut carrots (they were like long orange sticks) on the table. They sparkled. All bright in our empty kitchen. They were a golden edible bouquet – to welcome us home. It was special – with our Mum in her bed most of the time. 

I don’t remember the laundry lady very well – I remember her apron and brown shoes in stockings. She would gather up the afternoon tea dishes and run them under water and upside down on a towel, untie her apron, lift her coat onto her shoulders before snapping out her scarf and whisking it up high to cover her head and tie under her chin. She would clip out the door in her brown shoes – we would grab another carrot stick, my sister and I, and prepare to tow the wagon of clothes after her.”

The children are watching me – I must have stopped talking at some point.

‘Shall we make some carrot sticks? Who can find the best jar to put them in? What about that big tomato sauce jar from last night’s Pink Pasta? Let’s take off the label and clean it up. Reusing jars is cool, you know.’

‘We know, Grandma.’

‘Put an ice cube in the bottom of the jar, then fill it with water. I will cut them long-ways with the sharp knife then you arrange them in the jar like flowers sticks.

‘Now, just a slight sprinkle of salt. Just a little.’

‘Why?’

‘Why is not a question, you know.’

‘Why do you sprinkle just a little salt?’

‘To give us sweet and salty. Sweet and salty is tasty.

‘It’s like life – sometimes it is sweet, and sometimes it is salty and stingy. They work together.’

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Celi