A New Old Routine?

January is always an interesting time to me. The post-holiday lavishings of food, sleep, food, vegging, food, friends, food, family, and food have passed into the annals of one year as a new planner opens to the potentials of all the above for a new year. I, for one, am feeling refreshed this new year, perhaps more than in almost any year previously...maybe it's because I'm not pregnant as I was this time last year. Maybe it's because my husband isn't scheduled for biopsies, surgeries, doctor's appointments...maybe not living in doom and gloom lifts the spirits as much as it lifts the body.
In any case, 2009's opening feels alot like those summer days when I was a kid: I'd heft a load of soaking laundry up the narrow, steep basement stairs with my mom following behind with her giant bucket of clothespins. We'd go out to the backyard where my dad had strung what could only be called a haphazard network of heavy cording that must've appeared from the heavens to be a welcome "web" offering sheets, coats, undies, and socks to any and all in need. I can still remember the scent of Tide and Downy and the strange crispness of clothing that should've been soggy when wet (and why did Mom prefer one detergent and a different fabric softener? I used to wonder. Now, as a domestic engineer myself, such eccentricities aren't nearly as mystical; they downright jive with my common sense). We'd stretch and snap and hang and pinch that laundry. And then it would flap and flurry in the midwestern winds. And when it finally cycled into my dresser or onto my mattress, I'd breathe in that peculiar scent of the indoor washer and the outdoor dryer -- you know, that scent simply cannot be reproduced. And, in the end, I just felt cleaner. Purer. Refreshed, I suppose. That's 2009.

Probably by June, I'll look back at this post and think, "Where'd that calm go?" But I'd also like to think I'll reread that childhood memory. Then maybe I'll go hang some wash outside.