Between the Lines

Tonight I will slip into a bed smelling of sunshine and fresh air.

Nothing is better than freshly laundered sheets dried outdoors.

When we moved to this house, it did not truly feel like home until we had erected a clothesline. Until that time, each load of laundry filled me with a yearning for a clothesline... especially when I washed the bed sheets.

The fragrance of line-dried sheets is one I remember from childhood. While I did not quite appreciate the roughness of line-dried bath towels, I loved the smell of freshly washed, line dried sheets. Most of our clothes were dried on the clothesline for much of my younger years.

Perhaps that is why I have almost always made sure I had a clothesline wherever I lived, even if I had to string the line between two conveniently spaced trees. That and the fact that I hated spending money and time waiting for clothes dryers at the laundromat.

If my love for the clothesline and the sense of "home" it gives me comes from my childhood memories, then most of today's children won't know that special comfort of settling between freshly washed and line dried sheets. They won't know the simple pleasure of hanging clothes on the line.

Today, many homeowner's associations don't allow backyard clotheslines because they are not aesthetically pleasing. But I find nothing more aesthetically pleasing than clothes hanging on the line.

It is a simple pleasure. I love hanging clothes on the line, even on chilled days like today, when the breeze had a little bite to it. Nothing pleases me more than watching the sheets and towels flap in the breeze... feeling the coolness, or heat of the dried clothes as I take them off the line... bringing in a basketful of sun- and wind-dried things.

A simple pleasure. Like running and playing hide and seek among the trees. Climbing a stack of straw bales. Dress-up parades through the garden. Picking berries and eating snap peas fresh off the vine.

Simple pleasures are better than anything.

Pass it on.