Airing Laundry.

I love clotheslines. Exactly why I can't pin down; like the canyon winds, the whys are always changing, directing thoughts elsewhere. Perhaps it's the memories of hiding among eggshell-white Egyptian cotton sheets at my Grandmother's house. She always had matching sheets. When I grow up, I'll have matching sheets too. But now, do I? No, no, no. That would be far too domestic.

Perhaps it's the somewhat fiendish feeling I get remembering how my sister and I would hang our naked baby-dolls on my mother's umbrella clothesline. Round and round they'd go, faster and faster until the dolls vaulted off. We laughed. Sometimes we'd pin them back on, and sometimes we'd call it a day for doll torture and move on to cutting all the hair off our Barbies. 

Perhaps it's the scent of pine I don't have to pay for in detergent. Or the canoe laid up behind -- like an actor behind the curtains, waiting for his next part to play. 

Or perhaps, it's the unknown. The chance factors involved. Like bailing hay, there's always that possibility that it will rain, molding the cutting. There's that possibility that a storm will soak the t-shirts. Or a bird might poop on the pillowcases. Will I later find a grasshopper in bed, tucked into the sheets? To hang out laundry is to take a chance. To gamble if it will work this time, or if it will be drenched in failure. 

Thunder threatened all afternoon, like a father scolding me for even having had the thought of putting it out...

...and yet I did. I disobeyed. Chanced it. And ended up winning the bet. Although, there's still always that possibility I'll end up tucked into bed with a grasshopper. An apt punishment in the end.