the nostalgia of a clothesline

It is 90 degrees outside and quite sunny. I hung my clean laundry on the clothesline for the first time this year. The cold and wet clothes felt good against my skin and made the task feel not so tedious. And it made me realize that I hadn't hung clothes on a clothesline since I was not quite tall enough to reach the clothesline! It's been awhile. But I think clotheslines are wonderful, and they hold a lot of nostalgia for me, because when I was little, we would make fortresses out of big blankets and the clothesline and it was magical. Especially at night when we had only our beach towels (and maybe our swimsuits) hung on the clothesline after we had been swimming in our tiny pool all day. I say especially magical at night because this is when the heat would die down and the fireflies would come out and it felt as if we could run through the forest of towels into another world underneath the giant fir tree. It really was giant, and the fireflies congregated under there.

I miss those days. I hope that someday our children will play like that.
I hope we are able to teach them that imagination is the best plaything.
I thank God for giving me such a wonderful husband, since I know that he feels the same way.
Someday, there will be children to play under the clothesline.
Today, I will revel in the nostalgia of a clothesline and the heat of long-ago summers.