Each time I travel to Portugal, I especially notice something that I do not seen at home. It is colorful. It is common. It takes talent, well, at least some practice, anyway. It is personal, sometimes way too personal! It is seen on sunny days and also on cloudy, rainy days. It needs the breeze, but cold rainy wind??? What am I looking at? The laundry hanging out the windows drying...
Driving down the highway...
In town, around every corner...
Above a meeting place...
Above the sidewalk...
"Hidden" away up the side of the apartment...
A view of the neighbor's laundry...
Across the street from the church...
In just the few days we have been here, I see once again that it is a normal sight, everywhere. No one thinks twice about hanging out their laundry for all to see. It is the way of life. I doesn't matter if it is the sheets and blanks, white granny panties, or colorful cuecas (underwear). It doesn't even matter if it is raining and a cold wind is blowing. It will hang outside until it is dry. With the rain we are experiencing, that could take days!?!
When we lived in an apartment for several weeks last year, I would use the clothes line outside the kitchen window. We were three stories up, so I learned very quickly it took skill to hang each item so that it would not fall to the ground below. Fortunately I only lost several clothes pins and only one of R's white tshirts!?! I admire the skill these Portuguese women possess in this household duty.
To wash clothes is a major weekly task. Washing machines here are generally quite small and usually located in the kitchen. If one has a clothes drier inside, it is a luxury. This truly makes one appreciate a large capacity washer and drier!!!
It is these every day common things that make my trips here so wonderful. Seeing them makes one either wish things could change at home OR makes one really appreciate the ease in which we do certain tasks -- like doing the laundry.
Until my next exciting musings ... blessings.
What beauty you are experiencing! Even in the airing of laundry, although it is clean laundry with the number of people that obviously see what is hanging the vulnerability is high. Or at least I believe it would be for some of us in the states. Which makes me question what I would be hiding, by not hanging my laundry out and why I would feel a need to hide it? (pride? fear?) This week at our home group we are going through exercises that are testing our ability to be vulnerable with others and the need for each of us to share what's going on in our lives with someone else so as not to carry the burden alone. So, do those precious people in Portugal hang their laundry free from worry of exposing any character flaws that we are called to rid ourselves of? Maybe, or maybe they just like the way the clothes smell in the fresh air!
ReplyDeleteWho knew one could go this deep with hanging laundry! :)