“Dirty Laundry”

Connecting Generations Through Memories.

There once was a time, long before social media, when a secret could be kept secret. Thiswasn’t always a good thing, especially when silence allowed people to harm others. I amnot talking about those kinds of secrets. I am touching upon the difference betweengenerations ago and today when it comes to personal and familial privacy.

A few years ago, I hosted an all-female art show while working at a retirement village. I had artists of all ages from high school to senior adults with various forms of paintings, photographs, and other media. One piece was a colored pencil drawing of a clothesline with a variety of clothes being blown and dried by the wind. It didn’t connect with me, until one of my wise residents shared her memories and read the poem thataccompanied it, by Marilyn K. Walker:

“A clothesline was a news forecast to neighbors passing by. There were no secrets you could keep when clothes were hung to dry. It was also a friendly link for neighbors always knew if company had stopped by to spend a night or two. For then you’d see the ‘fancy sheets’ and towels upon the line; you’d see the ‘company tablecloths’ with intricate design. The line announced the baby’s birth to folks who lived inside as brand new infant clothes were hung so carefully with pride. The ages of the children so readily be known by watching how the sizes changed you’d know how much they’d grown. It also told when illness struck, as extra sheets were hung; then nightclothes, and a bathrobe, too, haphazardly were strung. It said, ‘Gone on vacation now’ when lines hunglimp and bare. It told, ‘We’re back!’ when full lines sagged with not an inch to spare. New folks in town were scorned upon if wash was dingy gray, as neighbors carefully raised brows, and looked the other way. But clotheslines now are of the past for dryers make work less. Now what goes on inside a home is anybody’s guess. I really miss that way of life. It was a friendly sign when neighbors knew each other best by what hung onthe line.”

My perspective changed with every line of the poem as I pondered the ways of the pastand the story our laundry tells. I also thought of how exhausting and never ending this chore is and how grateful I am for the modern-day dryer.

Another one of my favorite activities with the senior adults was our book club. At thetime, I was in my late forties, they were in their early nineties, and my daughter in hermid-teens. Each of our perspectives came from widely different generations. Mydaughter wasn’t a part of our book discussion, but I would compare the world in whichshe was living to the one in which I grew up and that of my residents.

One book we read was “The Pilot’s Wife” by Anita Shreve, where a wife’s husband, who was an intercontinental pilot, died suddenly in a plane crash. His wife and children

mourned his loss, but then discovered he had a whole other wife and family across thepond in England. The story is full of mystery, drama, romance, and explores themes ofgrief, betrayal, and the inability to fully know another person.

My first reaction was what a loser the husband was, my resident’s reaction was much more forgiving. In all our discussions about the various themes of the book, his adultery was overlooked by every one of them.

I also considered how the pilot’s second family was kept a secret. Perhaps that was possible at one time, but not today, not in my daughter’s world with cell phones and location trackers where we trace everyone’s whereabouts 24/7. And social media posts that put our business out there for all to see. There are even sites to run someone’s name to check if they are being faithful or not. And for some people, social media is their wayof airing their dirty laundry.

Our family has a few secrets of its own, both of my great grandmothers have tall tales totell. One had three children from three different men and never married any of them. My other one died after a botched home abortion performed by her mother-in-law. I am not judging any of these women, honestly, I wish I could talk with them and hear their version. I am only saying every family has their own colorful history. My parents keptsecrets from me, and rightfully so. It was my cousin who after researching our family genealogy pieced together about our great grandmother’s history of giving birth “out ofwedlock” as they used to say or noted on birth certificates as “illegitimate.” How awful!

It was my grandmother, well into her late eighties, that during a car ride with my grown adult sister confessed the truth about her mother’s tragic death at the hands of our great-great grandmother. The version my grandmother told me was that her mother died from falling off a stool reaching for something in the kitchen cabinet. She must have sensed I couldn’t handle the truth, or I would expose the family secret. She wasn’t wrong.

The picture accompanying this story was given to my father from one of his Sunday school teachers, Mildred May, in 1946, my dad would have been eight years old. I wonder what secrets she knew or heard tell of my father’s family.