The Clothesline

From that same window where I had observed sun rising from the sky, I saw two clotheslines hanging from one side of the house to the side of another house. A retractable wheel that allowed one to pull the clothes in and out, after they had been sun dried and kissed. There were four black shirts hanging on one of the two lines, the further out one, and three gray shirts and a pair of white underwear hanging on the line closer to me.

I stood by the window, where I often admired the rising sun over the bay, and I watched the clothes being blown gently by the southern trade wind. This was a beautiful apartment, one that I could get used to. One I had gotten used to, on occasion. The clotheslines reminded me of another house, another house I owned, a similar clothesline hung from the deck. It was installed by the prior owner. If you traced the line, you’d see it ending at the other side of the street on a pole. The backyard ended before the line ended. The clotheslines used the same mechanical component. I was always fascinated by it. I liked how it went on and on. On that deck I could see the bay also, the east bay. At that precise moment, I had a daring thought. I wanted to invite B to see my other house.

B stood next to me, and said, “Isn’t that cool? I wanted to do a photo documentary of the clothes that have been hung on those lines. It’s illegal to have clotheslines in San Francisco, can you believe it?”

"Such a shame." I answered. I liked clotheslines. I liked clothes hanging on the clotheslines. They smelled wonderful, like the sun, like the spring, like the air. They took on the surrounding environment. Whatever and however the world smelled next to them, they smelled like them. It became them. My old house in the hills had a clothesline, though they were not used. It was surrounded by eucalyptus trees. I wished that I had strung some clothes. At my house now, I had built two clotheslines in the backyard. But I rarely did my own laundry, my maid might have done something with the lines, though I was never quite sure. As she came in during the day, before my return.

In my French country home, there were two clotheslines as well. They were strung from the stone walls to the large pine trees all the way to the back of a deep yard. No doubt my previous owner, a middle age Bostonian blue blood woman, used wooden clothespins to clip on her colorful silk dresses she worn in the summer, next to the lilac bushes.

"Often they would have different colored clothes on the lines. There was a pattern." B continued. That day, it was rather monochromatic. B seemed disappointed. I pictured some days there would be a rainbow colored soft silk shirts all lined up. They’d be blown by the gentle wind, and instead of clothes, they would look like the colorful blue and red silk drapes hung just below the translucent plastic ceiling at a typical Southern Indian open market.

Earlier that afternoon, B and I laid quietly next to each other, we had drifted into sleep, after we’d done exploring each other. He asked me about my childhood after I woke up. So I shared some stories.

Once B wrote to me that he wanted to get to know me more, about my childhood, my life back in the motherland, and my background. I found myself telling B about moving to a high school where they had a dormitory and how I ended up in one when I was only 12. I had been out of the house since I was a young girl. B listened and occasionally asked questions. I had gone back to my journals from 1998. I learned that I used to tell him all those stories, or at least somethings about me, as he fed me green tea ice cream after we devoured sushi. In bed he used to say how much he liked me, how I was both fragile and strong. But B had forgotten about our past, our dates and our embraces. We were once close, and then we drifted apart, by the time we came back to each other, we had to start all over again. I knew nothing of him. He knew nothing of me. We were two strangers who were drawn to each other’s scents.

"What are you?" I asked.

"I’m part German. Part English or Irish." He answered as I examined two old photos of his ancestors on the wall. They moved to Nebraska. He said.

Last year while I was sailing in Europe, he visited his relatives in Nebraska with his son. I knew so little about him, yet I remembered everything he told me.

Under the sunlight I saw wrinkles on B’s face. I saw not the young man I first met but this mature man who held my affection.

I asked him what time our Christmas dinner was, he said, “on the early side”.

I laughed. “Yes so that we could take advantage of the early bird special for senior citizens. Like the Sizzler.”

He replied, “Yes, in two years. Then I could.”

In two years B would enter the middle age. I realized that I liked this version of him much more. We needed to both grow apart, to start different lives, before we could meet and be together again.

For his middle age birthday, I had promised B that I would take him to see my homeland, somewhere far and away, somewhere ancient, somewhere clotheslines were strung in every street corner, on which cotton sheets and baby onesies, young woman’s bras and grandma’s handkerchieves were hung.