Clothes pin power!

I hang my laundry out on a clothes line in my garden, but till my friend, R, sent me a news cutting from the Wall Street Journal of September 18, I never knew that 60 million Americans can’t hang out their laundry because they live in communities that ban this mundane domestic activity.
The article, “The Right to Dry: Clothesline Movement Roils American Neighborhoods” was written by Anne Marie Chaker. It is about a community, Awbrey Butte, in Oregon, where the home owners association bans hanging out laundry.
A resident, Susan Taylor, moved there with misgivings, but thought that she could deal with the restrictions. Then she heard an environmental lawyer talk on the radio about the narrow window of opportunity to deal with global warning and was moved to install her clothesline.
Many of her neighbours reacted with fury and one said, “This (the act of hanging out laundry) bombards the senses!”
Well, that expression bombarded my own senses!
Yes, Susan Taylor has broken the rules of the housing association in which she lives, but what is really so offensive about hanging out laundry?
I grew up in a household with no washer or dryer and the laundry was dried on clothes lines on a communal drying green.
Neighbours helped neighbours hang up sheets and heavy blankets. Cloth diapers on the line signaled the arrival of a new baby in a household and neighbours happily called on the new mother to offer assistance.
For me, the act of hanging out laundry brings a sense of community.
A few years ago I wrote my laundry memoirs. “Monday. You mean you can’t hang out your washing in Washington!”
I am so passionate about hanging out laundry and the right to do so that I have joined laundrylist.org and my laundry memoirs will appear in their next newsletter!
I wish you all a gweed drocht! (A good drying wind)

Christmases Past

Planning Christmas in California for P&M makes me think of the
Tong family Christmases we shared in the 1970s.
Richard and I and P&M, were relatively newlyweds, living in tiny apartments, with no room to host family Christmases.
One year Richard and I wanted to be on our own for the holiday. We were living in Cambridge (UK) where Richard was completing his Ph.D.
We wanted to experience a real Cambridge Christmas, with a carol service in King’s College chapel and walk on the frozen River Cam.
Besides, I wanted to cook a small Christmas dinner for just the 2 of us in our studio apartment.
I’ll always remember that cozy Christmas when we were happy newlyweds.
But we never repeated Christmas-by-ourselves until we came to US.
We had to endure the “in-law sulk,” which involved heavy sighs and “You will miss us when we are not here for you to come to at Christmas!”
But we all got over that and I do have fond memories of the in-law family Christmases.
MIL cooked and baked everything herself, spending hours in her tiny kitchen. FIL assisted by plying her and the rest of us with pre-lunch sherry.
One year he made exotic cocktails, which immediately sent SIL, M, to bed for the rest of the day.
There was no dining room in their small house so we crowded around the table in the small living room. There were never enough chairs, but we made do and perched on the arms of armchairs. We bumped elbows as we took fork and knife to the generous roast beef and sloshed gravy on the Yorkshire puddings.
We pulled the Christmas crackers, put on our paper crowns and groaned at the corny jokes that were in each cracker.
We could have been a family in a Mike Leigh movie.
Lunch was timed to end a few minutes before three o’clock so that we could always gather round the telly to watch the Queen. But as soon as her Majesty began to wish us a Merry Christmas, Uncle F declared he had to go home.
No, he wouldn’t wait for tea, he’d best be off before dark. Uncle F lived alone and had nothing to rush home for, but someone always had to abandon the Queen to drive him home.
I do miss him and the in-laws and we will toast them with sherry when P&M are here.
We have already promised that we will not serve exotic cocktails.

Christmas 2007

Christmas 2007 started for me at the end of March. My SIL, M, emailed to tell that her husband, P, (Richard’s brother) was going into hospital the following week for surgery to remove a massive growth in his colon.
Apparently this had been diagnosed the previous December, but they had chosen to keep the news to themselves, and for all those months, during our frequent phone calls, Richard and I had been chattering about the trivialities of our lives.
But, even although it had been their choice to keep their worry private, we felt guilty for not being there to help.
My instinct was to get on a plane and just go, but what on earth could I have done once I got there? I couldn’t even have dealt with airport security on my own and I’d need assistance at every stage.
I don’t drive and someone would have to meet me at Heathrow Airport and take me to Wales, where P and M live.
M would have to help me get upstairs and shower every day because their house is not arranged, as mine is, to meet my needs, with handrails, shower stool and is not within walking distance to anything useful.
I couldn’t drive her to the hospital to visit P and I’d just be THERE, more of a liability than help.
But what kind of help would I want if I were in a similar situation?
I know I wouldn’t enjoy having anyone around me, cooking for me and trying to learn the ways of my household. Richard travels frequently on business and I enjoy being left to my own eccentricities.
So I offered the kind of help that I’d appreciate myself and that I could give easily.
Regardless of the eight-hour time difference I was available for phone calls and listened through the anxious times.
When we knew the surgery had been successful and no further treatment would be required, we had to celebrate!
“Come for Christmas!”
The invitation was accepted and now I’m planning Christmas in California for P and M who have only celebrated the holiday in the traditional English way.

I’m Margaret and this is my intro blog: A Scot living in the Bay Area

Thanks to Susan Ito’s encouragement, I am starting a new blog.

A few years ago I was a student in Susan’s writing class at the UC Berkeley extension and recently found her online blog. I’m happy to have reconnected with Susan and to enjoy her writing in all it forms.

I started to write one at the end of 2003. A few people did respond, but I think I stopped because I wasn’t too clear in my mind that I wanted to write about my life as a person with a disability.

I was born in Scotland and have lived in the East Bay for almost 30 years. Both places are equally ‘home’ and I do not prefer one over the other. Thanks to the Internet, I’m always ‘in’ Scotland.

My new blog is not about how “awful” my life is because I was born with cerebral palsy, because it definitely is NOT! Neither is it intended to “inspire.” That is YUCK!

It‘s about whatever I’m thinking about, memories and current concerns.

But I do blog with my left hand only and my right hand has a mind of it’s own.

The link to those early entries.