Laundry down on the farm

Prompt: Write a Laundry Poem

Not nearly as picturesque as Grandma’s clothes line, but it’ll do. (Image licensed from Adobe Stock by author)

Laundry washed and spun,
wrung and hung in country air.
‘twere Jay’s laundry days.

How I spent my summer vacations…were with my Grandma Jay at a split-level ranch house she shared with her second husband and my great-uncle Alfred. Her house was located on the way to my mom’s job, which meant my grandmother could babysit us during school vacations.

Not just a house, it was a farm big enough that there were always ample supplies of fresh fruits and vegetables to enjoy and plenty of labor to be done in the sizable yard and garden to keep young bodies busy.

Every weekend during summer vacations my mom dropped us off around 6:45am — work at the factory started at 7. I can still see myself crunching up the gravel driveway, walking through the breezeway, and into the house by way of the side door. (The doors were never locked then.) Up three steps through a pass-thru — containing the partitioned picture window to the backyard — I’d go to reach the living room with its forward facing picture window.

I would curl up on the couch or go quietly into my grandma’s room, snuggle under sweet-smelling sheets, head on a downy soft pillow, and fall back to sleep. When I woke, we’d have breakfast together— grandma and me. She always had tea with lemon and Sweet-n-Low and toast with butter before starting on the daily chores.

The lower level of the house was a utility room with laundry machines next to a double-sided cast iron tub, a full standing freezer, and shelves as tall as (young) me filled of home-canned vegetables and sauces tucked behind panels of handsewn curtains. A small wicker desk and chair, painted avocado green (of course), is where I spent much of my time crafting and even then pretending to be a writer.

The washing machine was a holdover from a bygone err. An immaculately clean round white body with four long legs on wheels, a lid that came complete off, and a wringer that swung from side to side, allowing water to be squeezed from garments and linens over the tub.

I loved it.

On laundry days, I’d leave my little desk, sit on the top step, elbows on my knees and head on my hands…