Yesterday on May 30th, Memorial Day 2011, I awoke to "powdered Sugar" snow coating the back yard. I went running anyway and my friend Craig and I did 14 miles - the tough Devonshire run. It was cold enough to have long sleeves, a jacket, and light gloves on. But I was damned if I was going to wear tights on May 30th. It was a great run and it was a great day - but not as good as this day was.
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| Just to show that there was really snow out there |
Today was one of those rare days of clarity. I think I actually stayed in the "now" (Just read "The Power of Now). I got up at 630, read the paper, did laundry and hung sheets and towels on the line. Jack and I went for four mile run even though my legs were a little whiney from yesterday's hills. Still the sun was shining, it was 45 degrees or so and we had to go. We saw our friend Teton (the dog) and his human whose name is either Lori or Linda - I can never remember. I always remember the dog's names but not the humans! We saw a lot of other runners who, like me, had to be out there because it was just so damn nice.
I came home and did some yoga with Rodney Yee in my basement - hip openers to be specific. I also did a few other retreaded housewifey things and went out to get the clothes off the line. I stood for a moment, in between the sheets and the towels and just inhaled that fresh scent of clothes dried by the sun - I swear I got high for a while - no I think I was high for the rest of the day. I thought of my mom and how she never had a dryer. I do have one but there is nothing that smells as good as crawling into bed at night on sheets that smell of the great outdoors, my childhood, and all things good for a person - and a simpler time when things weren't so complicated by technology. I remembered the stiff blue jeans and socks and how you got exfoliated by the towels because they were so hard. I still like that towel exfoliation and how towels fresh off the line make the bathroom smell better than any scrubbing bubbles or other bathroom cleaners - and hang the shower curtain on the line and it is intoxicating when you put it back in the bathroom.
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| Me hanging clothes on the clothes line. |
My mom also had to hang clothes in the house in the winter because she never had a dryer until the last four or five years of her life. She had a rack that went around our wood stove and all the clothes were placed there to dry - which took a long time and they ended up smelling like wood smoke. This clothes rack, placed around my sister's and my bed with a sheet over it, also served as a steam tent when we both had whooping cough when we were kids. Yes we were immunized - not sure why we had pertussis.
My mom had a wringer washing machine that all the moms had in those days and there were a lot of injuries from little kids getting their hand stuck in the wringer. I can still hear the noise it made and I remember coming down stairs to piles of laundry sorted on the kitchen floor. Sometimes when I was older, we went to the laundromat and spent hours (twenty five cents to wash and 10 cents for ten minutes to dry) there. We could leave our clothes and run over to Wagar's restaurant for a while and get something to eat and no one would take them.
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| This is what a wringer washing machine looked like - this isn't my mom though. |
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Our moms really worked hard when we were kids and my mom thought Bruce and I were crazy to hang stuff out when we have a dryer. Bruce's mom had a dryer but hung her stuff out all summer because she too, loved the smell. I am not as good as Bruce in that I don't like to hang the socks and underwear out (too tedious - not because I don't want people to see my undies).
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| This is the kind of clothesline my mom had and they are the best ones! |
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| Our clothesline now - its work was done for the day. Hanzo waiting to Pee on it. |
Anyway, I carried that good smell and the memories with me the rest of the day and felt ambitious. I had coffee with a friend. I framed a poem and picture that my daughter had given me that she had done on her press. I sewed some pillow shams that have been ripped for years.
Just like it is hard to explain what makes a run really great, it is hard to adequately explain what makes a day especially good. I think it is just a day where you feel grateful for being able to do ordinary things. You feel connected to but not encumbered by your past and hopeful for your future. But you are truly in the moment - even if it is for one brief, shining day. Today I feel lucky to enjoy the spring mornings at my own pace and really smell the world and know how lucky I am to be part of it. Nothing out of the ordinary but just the way it should be.
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