Laundry at Night

When it is warm enough, I have to get the laundry in by dark, or it gets covered with bugs.  Ants seem to think that the lines are their personal highways anyway, I just don't like the nocturnal bugs in my clothes, and especially not in my baby's diapers! 


Unfortunantly right when I need to get the laundry in before dark in the summers, is also right when the kids get cranky, tired, and hungry, and also right when my husband thinks the world suddenly needs to revolve around him.  He's fine the rest of the day, but just once a day can't I drop everything at a moments notice and pay attention to him?  It's hard to drop anything at a moments notice when you are living off the land.  Everything is a web of things that other things depend upon.


Hathor the Cowgoddess calls this the bewitching hour.


Once it freezes, though, sometimes it is too cold to take the kids outside with me, and I enjoy the best time to hang up laundry being in the middle of the night.








The death in the air stings my throat and shrinks my nostrils.  Sometimes it's too cold to breathe.  Tingling points of ice touch cover my exposed skin.  Clouds trail in fast motion as the wind whips through the night.  The silence and peace and utter lack of humans refreshes me.  No nagging.  No tugging.  No neighbors looking over concerned.  No judging.  Just peaceful night surrounding and loving me.  I am invisible in the dark.  I dare take the luxury of looking up at the stars.  This is my time.  I have no deadline to perform.  All I give in exchange is my scant sleep.  And stars are better than sleep.  I let the sky engulf me, happy in its unconcered beauty.  It is not a slave of small human concerns, what one person said, or what is or isn't on sale.  It does not care what deadlines were met or what car did or didn't start.  And when I become part of it, neither do I.  


It takes effort to hold the cloth on the line in the whipping wind, while I get the clothespin to stick.  But this is effort without interruption.  I can let my methodical self take over.  In the dark cold of the night, others' happiness doesn't depend on me being overly flexible, and I can be as rigid as the cold that permeates through my clothes.  


Civilization, common sense, and life itself, beckon for me to return to the warmth inside.  But I am free!  Free of concern about everything else, and I inhale the black coldness.
Each item I hang, will dry quickly in this wind, and I think of the luxury of having several clean diapers for my baby.  The luxury of his screams not ripping my soul as I scrounge for something to put on him, before he soaks me while he nurses back to sleep.   If only I could always enjoy creating happiness in life, while remaining separate from it, as I do now.