My mother took in ironing. Just being born, of course I didn’t have the words for it, or any words at all, but I think I knew. I could feel it, the warmth. Not the heat from the iron, nor the steam, but the balm of service done with grace.
It wasn’t humility. She wasn’t lowering herself. She loved clothes. She needed the money. She tested the quality of the fabric between thumb and forefinger. She knew how it would behave. How to make the collar and cuffs respond, not with rigidity, but a wantful desire to frame a face, release a hand. When finished, she didn’t just exchange it for cash, she showed them how to wear it — not as a mannequin, but a woman with style unpurchased. And they knew it. That’s why they came back. They could have gone to the local dry cleaner on Broadway, but they returned to my mother, in the white house, near the end of Van Dyke Road.
I watched her years later, doing it for herself, and I could still feel the hands that cupped the back of my head, marveling at the warmth against my resting spine. My mother took in ironing, and ever returned it with grace.
We weren’t related, but they were older and nice, so it seemed natural to call them Grandma and Grandpa Dynda. And even though we didn’t share the same blood, there was an intimacy with these elders that anchored Van Dyke Road. Once you’ve run like the wind through your neighbor’s laundry on the line, I suppose there’s no turning back. You become a part of each other’s world.
Laundry day at the Dyndas was my version of the Douglas County Fair. I never liked carnival rides. All that spinning made me dizzy — lose my lunch kind of dizzy. But the wind I could ride. The white of sheets and t-shirts, house-dresses and towels, that flapped on Monday’s line in Dynda’s side yard waved to me. And my ticket was Grandma Dynda nodding from the open screen door. Her smiling hand wave said “go ahead, run through.” Arms above my head, I raced through the cleanest breezes in Alexandria, Minnesota. I thought if a hug could fly, this is what it would feel like. I danced and tumbled. It was all so fresh. This neighborhood. This laundry. This summer. This youth.
I walk past our neighbor’s laundry each day. Rain or shine, they have something on the line. I can’t get close enough to touch, for more reasons than just the gate. Time will take away many things. That’s just life. But I, we, can decide what remains. I stay connected to the world around me. I still believe that hope and possibility, even love, flaps fresh on the line — and permission signals from the screen door, “Go on! Run through!”
“Cooler days will be coming way sooner than you think.”
I knew my mother was right, but I was bound and determined to wear my one new fall outfit for the first day of seventh grade at Central Junior High School. It had been on lay-a-way at Herberger’s Department store since the end of July. I went with my mom every store visit, the clerk letting me try it on each time as my mom paid down a little bit more. The ensemble, a word I had just learned, was a pair of chestnut gaucho pants with a striped matching turtleneck and knee length socks. In the comfort of the air-conditioned fitting room, I marveled in the three-way mirrors, knowing, I think for the first time, the feeling my mother had when doing the same. You can call it vanity, but I don’t think so.
I watched her get dressed each morning. Piece by piece. It was an exercise in confidence. From shoes to earrings, it was a path to get out the door. A boost. A head-start, some days in an inconceivable race.
I attended sixth grade in that same school, but our classrooms were placed in an upstairs corner. We didn’t interact with the seventh through ninth graders. We used the side entrance, across from the Police Station. Let out only for lunch and gym, we were nearly invisible. But not this year. This year we were going to be a part of the Junior High School Class! Of course at the bottom, but in the race nonetheless. Everything would be brand new. I knew I needed those gaucho pants. My mother knew it as well. She didn’t put up a fight.
The Superintendent’s office that she worked in was located in that same school, just under the sixth grade classrooms. I rode with her to work. We had entered the same side door for a year.
This first day of my seventh grade year, I got dressed in her bedroom. She had the only full length mirror in the house. We drove through town with the windows rolled down. But she didn’t turn on our usual street. “What are you doing?” I asked, “Aren’t you going to park where you normally do?” “Yes, I will,” she said, “but after I drop you off. Today, you’re going through the front entrance.” I couldn’t stop smiling as she pulled up in front of the big double doors. I didn’t even notice the beads of sweat near my baretted bangs. I waved goodbye. I saw my reflection in the glass trophy case that welcomed the students. I guess it was meant for aspiration, but I already had mine — it, she, was driving to park by the side door.
The clothes pins we used were wooden. I wasn’t tall enough to hang anything on the line, nor old enough to wash clothes, but I did use them for a birthday party game.
My mom said I could use the whole basement for my party. I taped the donkey on the side of the wall. Put dice on the table. And placed the glass jar beneath the chair, beside the bucket of clothes pins. I was kneeling on the chair with pin in hand when she walked in. She paused with a look that said I thought we talked about this. And we had. I wasn’t going to play in any of the games. Or if I played, I wasn’t going to win, because the winner got a prize — their own present. And it being my birthday, I was guaranteed to get enough. “I’m not practicing,” I assured her, “I’m happy to let someone else win.” And I was. Truly. “I just like the sound it makes, when the wooden pin falls inside the glass.” She smiled at me. “The little clink, clunk…it’s like the glass is happy. It’s not empty anymore.” I didn’t really have to plead my case, my mother knew me. “Keep playing, forever,” she said.
It’s funny how long I thought forever would be back then.
I never had a clothesline until I moved to France. Our clothes dry in the breezes of Provence. Our clothes pins are plastic, and not really even pins anymore, but I still can hear the sound. Each memory of my mom bounces against the glass of my heart, clink, clank…and my heart is never empty.
Today is my birthday. I mention it only because I know that I have already won — so much. So I stand beside the chair and offer you to play. I want you to win on my birthday. I want you to hear the sounds of joy. The only way we outrun forever is to keep playing.
Yesterday I saw a photographer on Youtube manipulating a photo to make it seem old — like it was a memory lived, I suppose. The technique took some skill, certainly. And while the end result was interesting, I thought it lacked what the photographer wanted — the depth of an actual experience. That feeling is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to manufacture. And I began to think, would our time be better spent trying to capture real experiences, by, well, living?
Once the thought was in my head, spinning around like a kid on a ferris wheel — my brain urging “go ’round again, go ’round again — I began to see it everywhere, this attempt at manufacturing a life. I saw it in the catalogs. Buy our ripped jeans! What if we did the work in the jeans we owned? Wore them in the yard, the garden? Hung tools from belts? Bent? Stretched? Bounced children on bent knees? Wore them thread bare by living?
I saw the paint splattered jeans on the next page. Couldn’t we just actually paint? Splatter our own clothes with life experience? These are the colors that I want to live in — the colors flung from my own hand and heart.
It was everywhere. This manufacturing. Even with so-called friends. This trying to fill the life-size holes within us, with “likes” and “followers.” Certainly it has its place. I use it here, every day. To connect. Keep the strings attached through time and distance. But nothing will ever replace human contact. Sitting outside on a sunny day, laughing so hard with friends that waists become rendered useless, bent over by the weight of joy and memory. Nothing can replace the feeling of hugging someone, just a little longer. A kiss of a hand. An empathetic, no words needed, smile. A wave that can’t be contained in the hand, but must be lifted in the air with feet jumping!
I sit here typing, with paint on my shirt. It is valuable, not because it will sell in a catalog, but because I lived in it. Life’s couture. And I will again today! My heart, threadbare as my jeans, telling my brain, “let’s go ’round again, ’round again!!!”
I love to get dressed up. I don’t mean ball gown dressed up, (though I’m not against that for sure), but dressed nicely, put together, perhaps a scarf that matches my purse. To ensemble – yes, I made that a verb – feels wonderful. I have named my gloves — Ava Gardner, my sunglasses — Anna Wintour. Sure, some will call it vain, and it probably is, a little, but for me, it feels more like a confidence boost. Like there’s a superpower hidden right there inside of my gloves. And I suppose, if you believe it, it’s true.
I couldn’t have been more shy when I was a little girl. Not in Kindergarten, nor 1st grade, not 2nd, 3rd or 4th. As I got older I avoided speech classes. I didn’t want anything to do with it. So it surprises even me, that I can now give speeches, presentations, in front of any group. And even more surprising – I love it! I adore it. Yesterday I spoke to a group of Special Education teachers. I put on my green dress, with, of course, my matching green boots, my French scarf, and performed with confidence and strength.
Now, I know that the confidence comes from work. The writing. The painting. The living. The practicing. I put my heart and soul and hardworking hands into every performance. The work, the substance of my efforts, is an eggplant, for sure. Strong, sturdy, deep purple. And I know this. I live by this. But because I have put in the time, to grow, to make my “eggplant” strong, on those days that I get to perform, I put on the clothes, that take me from eggplant to aubergine. Because we get to decide, don’t we! We get to decide who and what we want to be! No one can tell us, or force us, not even our former selves! So I do the work. Smiling. Knowing, in a world of purple, I can be aubergine!
