Most of the wet laundry is out on the line after lunch time here, dancing in the wind. It's my afternoon ritual to bring the day's washing outside and hang it on the clothesline beside the house.
When they were younger the kids had a small clothesline set low to the ground. I even made them their own clothespin bag with a few rectangles of cotton and an old hanger. But that clothesline is long gone. Lupine can't even remember that we ever had it.
Yesterday Lupine was playing around my feet while I hung out the wet clothes. She suddenly pleaded, "Mama, would you please, please, please make me my own tiny clothesline so that I can hang up my own laundry? Today?"
What could I say? No was not an option. So I said, "Yes. Of course, you can have your own laundry line today."
No supplies on hand, no plan, and one heaping basket of wet laundry at my feet, we ducked into the garage. It is such a mess right now that I couldn't even find the garden twine. (Really.) I spied a tomato cage and announced, "Oh! The Tiny Clothesline Frame! It goes here - in the garden. Follow me!"
I wasn't sure she'd buy it.
We stepped into the garden and I pushed it into the ground. I hung her clothespin bag (discovered in the garage while searching for twine) from an old piece of string still tied to the frame. She beamed. She absolutely beamed.
She quickly set to work hanging all of her laundry on her new "clothesline".
After her little basket was empty she walked up and down beneath my line, requesting all the items of hers I had already hung up.
By the end she was naked. She stripped down and hung the clothes she was wearing beside the wet ones. After they were dry she loading them into her little basket and brought them inside.
And then my heart melted.
Again.
