The Old Brown Wicker laundry Basket

• Short story

								
An old brown wicker laundry basket stuffed with freshly washed white laundry. It reminded me of a chocolate cupcake with piles of vanilla frosting being carried up to the second floor landing by my mom. She amazes me. Twelve months of the year the laundry was hung out on our clothesline. We didn't own a dryer when I was little. I didn't know anyone else did. That's the beauty of innocence. Sitting at the kitchen table, looking out the window I would watch the rhythmic waves of the sheets being sent out into the breeze. One by one my mom would put each wooden clothespin to work holding her clean laundry safe from the asphalt pavement below. Bundled in a winter coat with fingers freezing or warm in the summer sunshine my mom sent the wet laundry out that creeky window. In the winter the laundry would be pulled back in stiff and crunchy and would have to be draped in the warmth of our home to thaw. In the summer it was warm and smelled like sunshine. No matter which month of the year, when my mom tucked me in at night, my nose burrowed into the sweet smell of nature's fresh air. Everyone has a dryer now. My mom still has a wicker laundry basket. Her fingers no longer freeze hanging out wet laundry in the cold though arthritis is a constant reminder. The clothesline has been taken down at the house I grew up in. But driving by I can still see it there. I can hear the squeak of the clothesline wheel. The sheets, clothes and towels hanging clean and proud. As an adult I ache at the thought that my mom had to hang wet laundry out in the dead of winter. But in the core of my brain sits a little girl at the kitchen table watching her amazing mom and the wonders that she made happen with a clothesline. That's the beauty of innocence.... and love.
								Rate this book:0.0 / 0 votes