Laundry Day

Laundry Day

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“Perhaps the job most loathed by Victorian womanhood was doing the laundry,” Ruth Goodman writes in How to be a Victorian, which I mentioned a few days ago. 

As I sort through my own darks and lights, I can’t help but think about how differently my laundry day will proceed from that of the Victorian woman’s. Hers would have started on Saturday, when the soaking began. 

More than 36 hours later she’d begin hauling and heating the water to eke out suds from the harsh soaps of the day, then stirring and agitating the clothes in a tub with a dolly stick (a plunger-like item) to remove the dirt. If she was lucky and had a wringer, she’d remove water from the clothes that way; otherwise, she’d wring them by hand. This would repeat through a couple of rinses, of course. In between she would have to carry large tubs of water in and out of what was most likely a cramped, dark kitchen. Only then could she hang the clothes up to dry. 

Laundry took up so much space and water-heating capabilities that the family would have a cold supper on laundry day, relying on leftovers from what was usually a larger meal on Sunday. 

Goodman says that her own historical laundry experiences lead her to see the automatic washing machine as “one of the great bulwarks of women’s liberation, an invention that can sit alongside contraception and the vote in the direct impact it has had on changing women’s lives.”

Land of the Living

Land of the Living

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Yesterday I spent a few minutes in Lala Land, courtesy of a dental procedure. This is not the Lala Land of tropical breezes and white-sand beaches. This is oblivion followed by someone saying, “It’s over. You can wake up now.” 

Nevertheless, I’m not one to turn my back on oblivion when I have the chance. In fact, I think oblivion is the perfect way to visit an oral surgeon’s office. 

Today I’m back in the Land of the Living. A cup of tea, a bowl of yogurt (still soft foods at this point) and no oblivion at all. I’ll take it. 

A Prediction

A Prediction

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So we have finally come to the end of January, the longest month. I’m convinced it has at least 40 days. No wait, that’s Lent, and it will be arriving soon enough. 

But today we’re in the clear. It’s February 2, and the groundhog has predicted an early spring. Based on the blooming snowdrops and hellebores, on the inch-long daffodil shoots in the front yard and the faint fuzz of bloom on the witch hazel tree in back, I’d say the groundhog’s prediction may be true. 

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, though, the rodent has been right only 40 percent of the time. So I won’t pack away the hats, gloves and wool sweaters just yet. I won’t wish him wrong, either.

Mom’s Scott Hotel

Mom’s Scott Hotel

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It is February 1, 2024, what would have been Mom’s 98th birthday. Today, I cede this space to the person who inspired me first, and inspires me still. In today’s post, Mom writes about one of the homes she lived in when she was growing up. The Scott Hotel is still standing, and is a source of continuing fascination. 

Most towns have a street called Broadway, wider than the rest, wider than Main or any of the tree- or number-named streets. The name itself makes one expect it to be wider and more important than most — and in the early life of most cities, it was. In Lexington, Transylvania, the first college west of the Alleghenies, and the Opera House, where the Barrymores and others performed, were built on Broadway. 

So when my uncle wanted to build a hotel by the railroad, he built it across Broadway from the Southern Depot. More than 20 trains a day passed that way and all but the fastest stopped to deposit or pick up passengers. Some wanted meals, some lodging for a night or even longer. 

None of my friends at St. Peter’s School lived in a hotel. But I did. It was my Daddy’s hotel, started by his uncle John Scott, and the street beside it was called Scott Street. It was a small hotel, three floors and about 20 or 25 rooms. The Southern Railroad ran right beside it, and the impressive yellow brick Southern Station was right across the street. 

One of the rooms on the second floor had been turned into our playroom. We kept our toys there and played all sorts of games. Several times we put on plays there, hanging a sheet and pretending it was a velvet curtain. We practiced hard and then we had to find an audience. We would go down to the lobby and ask some of the regulars to attend: Cigarette Charley and Pink-Eyed Whitey.

Mom’s writings don’t always have a natural conclusion. This one, like so many, leaves me wanting more.

Together Again

Together Again

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It’s the last day of January, and I’m thinking ahead to tomorrow’s post, the only guest post I have all year. My mother will “write” that one, as soon as I browse through her papers and find which of her writings to highlight.

In the meantime, I’m thinking about Mom, who would have turned 98 tomorrow. Yesterday I was repairing a tear in a blue-striped toddler dress that I wore as a baby. I found the pinafore for this dress earlier (see basement decluttering, below) and put it aside for sweet Aurora. When I delivered it to her on Saturday and her mother slipped it over her head and shoulders she immediately started to dance. It’s that kind of garment. 

But a pinafore requires a dress, and once I dug through another box and found it, I could see why I’d not set it aside, too. The dress was badly torn, the skirt pulled away from the bodice, the sash unattached on one side. Nothing to do but find a needle and thread and begin. 

Once I got into the project, I could see the previous repairs, the mended side seams, the hem that Mom had let down, her stitches surprisingly small and tidy. For an hour or so last night I felt like we were working shoulder to shoulder, laughing and chatting as our needles flew, together again.

The Appointment

The Appointment

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I made the appointment, and I’m keeping it. Not the dental appointment, though I made that one, too. This one is with the Reston Used Book Shop, where I’ll take a box of books tomorrow. If I can lift it, that is. 

I’ve written before of purging and rearranging, of my meager attempts to bring order from chaos. This current book removal project began as part of an ongoing basement decluttering effort, and has spread upstairs to a slew of double-booked shelves. 

The question now: Do I start filling another box to give away? Not so fast. I don’t want to overdo it. So I  haul the carton to the car for tomorrow’s date with destiny. That’s enough for now. I think I’ll celebrate …  by ordering a new book. 

(The future home of many of my books, I hope.) 

The Victorians

The Victorians

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They drugged their babies, wore four layers of underwear and often went hungry. They are the Victorians, and they may as well have been ancient Greeks so different are the lives they lived from our own. 

I learned these facts from the book How to Be a Victorian and the experiences of author Ruth Goodman, who lived for a year on a Victorian farm where she dug turnips, squeezed into corsets, and brushed her teeth with soot (which she recommends as an alternative to modern toothpaste). 

More than halfway through the book now, I can say with some certainty that life was difficult for most Victorians, who worked hard and ate little. It makes me wonder about the lives of ease that so many of us live. How has comfort shaped us? How did adversity shape them? 

(Halfpenny meals for poor children, 1870, from Wikipedia)

Standing Ovation!

Standing Ovation!

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My rule for a standing ovation is this: if the performance deserves one it should lift you up, almost a levitation, and you should find yourself standing as if by magic. 

I don’t always follow this rule. You stick your neck out when you leap to your feet before others. And you seem the curmudgeon when you stay seated while everyone else is standing. 

Every so often, though, conditions are right. The music moves you, you’ve cleared your lap of program and purse, and when the last notes sound you’re ready to jump up and start clapping. 

That’s what happened last night when the National Symphony Orchestra played the final bars of Shostakovich’s Symphony Number 5.  It’s a prodigious work, one I’ve loved since I first heard the Leonard Bernstein recording of it at my friend Barbie’s house in high school. 

I listened last night with significantly altered ears, heard the suffering and the pathos of it, the triumph, too. I felt the shiver down the spine, the frisson that cannot be faked. I knew that when it ended I would be on my feet.  It was the least I could do.

(The Kennedy Center Concert Hall stage, January 25, 2024)

Auld Lang Syne

Auld Lang Syne

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It’s Robert Burns’ Day in Scotland and elsewhere as fans of the poet raise their glasses to toast the man and his verse, preferably at a Burns Supper, where haggis is eaten, strong drink is quaffed, and songs are sung (some of them not suitable for mixed company). 

I saw little of Burns at the Writers’ Museum in Edinburgh. His room was being renovated. Instead, I looked at the exhibits of his compatriots, Robert Louis Stevenson and Sir Walter Scott. 

But today’s festivities are a perfect excuse to write about Scotland, look through photos of the place, and honor one of the most famous of Burns’s poems, Auld Lang Syne.

And there’s a hand, my trusty fiere!
And gie’s a hand o’ thine!
And we’ll tak’ a right guid-willie waught,
For auld lang syne.

Gift of Sight

Gift of Sight

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During these wide-open days of winter, I’ve been keeping a pair of binoculars on my desk. They’re fast becoming an essential element of this writer’s toolkit. 

I’m watching a fox sun himself in a sunny corner of our backyard. He paws at the snow, ambles around the hollies. Every so often he glances up with his perky ears and catlike face (a winning combination since the rest of him is doglike). Does he see me watching him? 

I marvel at the alertness of his posture, the thickness of his reddish-brown fur, his winter coat. I imagine the feel of the sun on his back, the generations of wildness in his bones. 

He is a gift, as are the woodpeckers and cardinals at the feeder. A reminder of the creatures who live among us, the natural world we inhabit. The binoculars help me see the fox and, by extension, all of creation.