It’s too warm for November, really, but I welcome the sun and the mildness of the day. It’s a good day for laundry on the line. Sheets, blankets, things that tend to get musty. One last airing out before winter.
I can’t even get the pins on before the wind starts gusting, pulling damp material out of my hands.
The wind is eager. “Let me take them,” she whispers. “I will make quick work of them.”
The sun is spreading heat on my back, and I peg, peg, peg, suddenly overtaken by the wild desire to tumble every last hamper of laundry outside, out here in the elements.
“It’s been too long since you’ve been at my mercy,” the wind cries.
Don’t I know it.
With the last of the blankets hung, the line leaps out of my hand and into the open yard.
How easily they take flight. How beautiful they are, billowing against the blue. How pure they will be when I take them in. I stand on the porch beside the empty basket and stare at them awhile.
It’s lunchtime, and my husband steps out of the screen door and asks what I’m doing.
It’s hard to explain, really. How do you admit you’re jealous of the laundry? How do you admit you desperately need the sun and the wind or you’ll go musty inside? How do you explain a conversation with the west wind?
I just smile and shrug, “Nothing.”
It’s nothing at all. Nothing but a piece of me pegged on a line, a dancing white flag of surrender.
~lg
S.D.G.