What is it about shirts or towels, or diapers, flapping on the fence, or the line, or the window-railings, that so inspired the impressionist painters that no fewer than thirty such paintings have found their way to the great museums of France and Italy? Why do Americans travel half-way around the world to admire, contemplate and exclaim over laundry flying in the wind in the side streets of Tuscany, or in the vineyards of Burgandy? Perhaps it is that bit of nostalgia in all of us called "HOME."
Where there is laundry on the line we are brought to immediate mind of a gentler time. We know we can trust the folks in the house behind that clothesline. We could borrow a cup of sugar, or find a sympathetic shoulder when the cat gets into the garden. Behind the door of that bungalow is a real family. There are children there. Were one to drop in, he would find a real, home-cooked meal, seven days a week. There are dandelions in the yard. It is always summer. We do not stop to think of the benefit of air and sunlight on the wearer of the clothing. Indeed, we sometimes fail to notice that it is baby diapers on the fence. We just know that these people are in the bloom of health, that they actually love one another. We have a strong suspicion that we could find them in church on Sunday, and that if we slipped to the window we'd hear song and laughter. Somehow, sight unseen, they are honest. We want to move next door.
It is singular, curious, how such a simple, even incongruous thing, can become art, and Heart. Any travel guide will tout the number of stars a restaurant or hotel earns, and the price of wine, but these are never the things you take photos of, nor tell your friends when regaling them with the adventures of your trip. You tell them of seeing the Eiffel tower for the first time, and get the obligatory, "Uh huh." And then you are off onto the side streets: the strudel shop, the street musician, and the quaint cul-de-sac with the laundry on the stoop. Your photo album has one shot of Pisa's leaning bell tower, and seven of the flowers in the pot, beside the green door of the white stucco house, with the overalls and socks drying on the stone wall. Has anyone ever shown you a photo of the row of stark, polished, sterile, immaculate hotels and condos on the beach at Torremolinos? Of course not. That is reserved for advertising.
Clearly, what we all need is reality. We need to know that "the other" is really "just us." We want to feel that we are on familiar, comfortable ground, even in exotic destinations we cannot pronounce. "Adonis and Persephone?" Yeah, I think I saw the statue, maybe. Where was it? But the blooming lavender bordering the dirt path leading to the old, drying shed outside Avignon, surrounded by sunflowers, and the long row of underwear tied to the guy-line tethering the tilting wall-that, one will never forget.
It really has nothing to do with the fact that sun-dried laundry is healthier for human beings. It is neither science nor the political reality that anyone who would prefer a dryer to a clothesline hasn't turned on his brain since 1957-it would be environmentally irresponsible. No, rather it is what laundry on the line connotes, that actually appeals. Examine a simple example. Young man meets young woman on campus. They talk. They share common interests. He asks her out, and gets an address. Saturday at 3:00 he drives over to pick her up.
Picture his thoughts as he approaches a home with sheets drying on the line. She won't be quite ready, by design. Her Mom will force a sandwich on him, as the dog thumps his tail on the worn, beige carpet. Little sister will grab him around the knees, and tell him things big sister doesn't want him to know. Little brother will beg to go on the hike with them. And Dad will slip him a $5 bill as they head to the car, with a cheerful, "Have a good time, son."
But what if the address he is seeking turns out to be a six-story, brown brick, featureless, block of condominiums? What is he thinking now? "Either her Mom will be a fake, platinum blonde of 55 trying to look 25, holding a manicured, miniature Malta-Poodle, and her Dad will insist on inspecting my stock portfolio before turning his daughter over to me; or else I will be met by a rotweiler, being held back by a bearded giant with handcuffs dangling from his grip." As he stands up his date and drives on down the road he thinks, "Maybe I will never see her again, though if I do I will have to apologize, but it sure beats two nights in a cell, and having to beg for mercy from an unsympathetic judge on Monday."
What if that brownstone had had even one friendly balcony where two petunias struggled to bloom, and where three baby diapers dried over the rail? Strange how such a simple thing adds life, humanizes, turns nightmares into fantasies. Cinderella and her Romeo (of course that is a mixed allusion) find the view from the mountain delightful, and romance ensues.
Strange, is it not, how the small towns appeal more than the big cities, how the back streets appeal more than the main streets, and how much one pays for a nineteenth-century, French painting of laundry? The heart-strings never let go of the ideal we call home.
(More travel stories by Dr. Black can be found at http://www.educationleadershipdynamics.com/travel/journal.htm) |
