I Remember

I remember…
I remember, as a very little girl, maybe three or four, lying on a blanket in the backyard where I’d
been put down to take a nap. Instead I was watching my mother hang sheets on the line. My
mom must have been about 27 then, long and graceful and shapely. The sun, as I remembered,
was behind her, and would cast her dark outline on each white sheet and she pinned it up. Her
head, upraised arms and elbows in silhouette, her hips and waist below the sheet, she would
rise on her painted toes each time she attached a clothespin. It was like watching a shadow
play. As I lay there sleepily watching, I saw her pass along the line of hanging sheets, setting
poles between the sheets to prop up the lines… sometimes as a shadow, sometimes as my
mother. The brevity of the moments between the sheets, when she was there glancing at me,
her real self, made them startling and filled me with love. There she was and then a few
seconds later there she was again.. much to my delight.