Clothesline Part I

Today is what my mother would call a good wash day -- sunny, dry, breezy and perfect for drying laundry on the clothesline. I've put out several loads of bedding on mine.

When I bought my house almost 11 years ago, the clothesline was the deal-clincher. Apart from the savings on electricity, and the opportunity to stand out in the garden chatting with the neighbours about how great air-dried sheets smell when you go to bed on them, I gradually became semi-conscious that hanging clothes on the clothesline is a role-playing exercise for me, where I get to pretend I'm a real grownup woman with a family to take care of -- in other words, I get to play at domesticity without having any of the responsibilities. As a childless single woman, there's still a part of me that doesn't feel entirely grown-up, and using my clothesline feels like playing dressup with my mom's old taffeta gowns and satin pumps used to. I guess I've never felt as though I measure up to the standards for what a woman is "supposed" to be (meaning, I suppose, that I could never match my mother's femininity) and while I think I've come to terms with the gap between society's expectations of me and the kind of woman I turned out to be, clearly there's a part of me that still pays attention to that imprint.

But -- surprise, surprise -- my self-image mirror reflects infinite layers. "I feel like I'm pretending to be you when I hang clothes on the line," I said to my mother recently.

"That's funny," she replied. "I feel like I'm pretending to be my mother when I hang clothes on the line."

(Here's what being a woman who puts out the wash means in reality: I hung up a cream-coloured fitted sheet from my bed and was horrified to see a large, rusty-looking stained patch. It was dye from a cheap nightshirt I bought at Zeller's, transferred to the sheets with my menopausal night sweats. I'm now worried my neighbours will think I'm incontinent...)