Rainbow Washing Lines
Tears begin to prickle on my cheeks. I try to blink them away. I look at the rheumy eyes
reflected back to me in the kitchen window. I don’t recognise myself anymore. The
wide-eyed wonder and glimmer of opportunity that danced across my face when we first
arrived here in this new country has been worn away with worry lines and a forehead that
has been rubbed so many times, it’s now shiny but not in a sparkly kind of way. I’m
standing at the sink in our kitchen in Lisbon. It overlooks the back of a hodgepodge of flats,
vacant buildings and random patches of wasteland. From the front, beautiful tiled facades
cover a multitude of sins and faults. From behind, the buildings are disemboweled, all
insides splayed, exposed, on full display in all their messy, muddled glory.
It’s day-goodness-knows-what of lockdown, and the morose mundanity and perpetual fear
has infiltrated every sinew. I am stiff and heavy with anxiety. A stone-like weight presses
against my forehead and I just want to curl up on the kitchen floor, the only cool part in
our otherwise humid and stuffy flat. The frustration and fear starts to pour out
uncontrollably in salt laced trails and barely stifled sobs. I am supposed to be making
pancakes, yet another bribe, but I can’t bring myself to move. The infinite scroll of news
that morning has left me fractious and fearful. This is unlike anything ever before and my
brain has reached its capacity... The continual surge of emotions has flicked the trip switch
in me today. Muted, still, frozen, I try to get a grip but the sobs keep coming.
‘Creakkkk’.
The familiar cranking and creaking noise of the lady drawing in the washing line at the
house opposite startles me. Everyday, around the same time, was laundry time for my
neighbour. She is meticulous and deft, the squeaking of the washing line signals the start
and the winding of the crank as the line taughtens signals its end. A familiar and
comforting bracket to an otherwise monotonous day.
Pre-lockdown I didn’t really spend much time looking out of our kitchen window, there
was always something to do. But for the past six months, it’s where I have spent most of my
time, rooted to my metre squared spot by the sink. A square of silence, of solitude, a spot to
stand away from the zoom calls and the latest homeschooling battle that has played out
that morning with thrown lego, tears and tantrums. It’s a spot to ponder in, to wash my
hands for the umpteenth time. It’s in this small square, I have found that as the time has
slowed that the groundhog grind has actually awoken my senses to my surroundings. Amid
the anxiety-laced nights and muddled mornings of juggling school and work, standing for a
moment in my little square has been a weird and perversely therapeutic solace. I have
noticed her often but today something is different. The normally deft execution is slowed
and I watch intently as she carefully hangs the laundry in in colour coordination —a criss
cross rainbow against the grey. The colours and slow determination of each movement
draws me out of my malaise and makes me smile. In defiance of this—one of the most
mundane of tasks—she’s created a small rainbow of hope.
As I watch her concentration, my eyes wander to her building. It is only her and her
husband who live on one floor. The rest of the building is utterly dilapidated, a library of
decay. If you didn’t know better, you wouldn’t think that anyone lived there. Yet when you
look a little closer, it is a hive of life, birds to and fro through the cracks of broken
terracotta tiles that hang haphazardly across the roof. Lizards bask on the tiled walls and
the garden is a tangle of wild flowers, visited often by one of the stray cats that sits basking
in the sunshine. I linger at the sink, in awe of the bubble of activity and life outside. I
wonder how many memories have been made within those four walls. How many times has
she hung out the washing? How many times has someone opened that window? How many
rain showers have pooled and flooded the downstairs empty room? How many times was
this building a home? All the history behind this building, what stories those walls could
tell. It’s these small details that I now notice, which would have otherwise got lost by the
frenetic franticness of life today.
This same daily routine, has become a small comfort and quiet relief in these strange times.
A reminder of others nearby behind walls, all living through this. Each dealing with the
monotony in their own way.
Now as September rolls in on a tidal wave of ‘back to school’ promise and societally
constructed ‘productivity pressures’, layers of uncertainty still linger. The moving goal
posts expand and contract daily, I try not to let the overwhelm suffocate and envelop me
again.
So, I stand in my little square again. Looking out my window, holding onto that rainbow
moment.
The washing line is a reminder, a cliche but nonetheless an important one for me; that if
you look for it you can always find something small but mighty, something extraordinary in
the ordinary.
A reminder, to never forget there will always be a glimmer amid the grey.
________________________________________________________________
Lucy Beckley
Lucy is a writer, wanderer and wonderer. She's lived in London, Cornwall, Berlin and
has recently moved to Lisbon. She writes mostly poetry and is in the final stages of putting
together her first collection, called The Fridge Door. She is also working on a fiction novel.
She’s recently had work published in Lionheart Magazine and on A Thousand Word Photos.
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