In late afternoons when the sun is low, I love sitting in our wicker-rocker on the back porch looking past trunks of redwoods, through sparse manzanita and rhododendron, into Dagma's Flower Garden to the four-stranded clothesline I built for her many years ago. Often, I'm inclined to sit on the porch when I notice she's left the laundry room to hang sheets. I'm a voyeur for her ritual of lifting and attaching sheets to the lines stretched from one pole to the distant other, each pole wrapped in creeping tendrils of morning glory and jasmine blooms-each line aimed west toward streams of sunlight reaching- like fly-fishing for trout. Waiting clothespins of different colors sit on the lines like swallows. And then, after wet-heavy sheets are stretched and pinned and the wind and sun lighten them to luff-the forward edge of my memory goes sailing again. This is a wonderful way to let go of my laborious mind...just being...entranced with watching and listening to her quiet rhythm and birdsong.

I don't recall the hanging of laundry in my childhood by anyone. Nor do I remember the touch of my mother's hands. But somewhere in the movement of sheets in the wind, my memory opens me to appreciate the abundance of love and care I have received in my life.

Our ritual of hanging sheets continues with sheet-gathering and bed-making together. Sheets fresh off the line laden with flower and ocean perfumes are released by our hands sweeping across tightened linen. I might ask her in jest as we worked opposite sides of the bed, "Could your military father bounce a quarter off this sheet? Would your German mother, housekeeper-for-inns and family, approve?" We often expose our fond memories of her departed parents-say our hellos to each under waving and folded linens. We stuff pillowcases with playful grunts, amorous tugs and dreams to be had.

White sheets in the wind or setting the table for a nightly dinner served-simple pleasures for our abundant life.

Gary asked me to write my memories of hanging sheets on the line.

I remember when I was a young girl, we lived in Aurora, Colorado, while my dad was in the military in Vietnam. My mom would make extra money taking in laundry work from others: washing, drying, ironing.

She would hang laundry out on the clothesline daily-even in wintertime. I recall one time going to collect laundry from the line and found my brother's lederhosen along with all the other laundry-including sheets-frozen stiff. All of it...hard as a rock. And this happened often in the winter.

Before that, when we lived in Germany, I remember my Tanta Annie who lived in Munich, hanging out her sheets to dry. And I remember the sadness my mother felt when we lived on the airbase in Rammstein, Germany because she had no clothesline because we lived in an apartment.

So, when we ended up moving to Great Falls, Montana and then Spokane, Washington, my mom was thrilled to have a clothesline again. She would hang out laundry and sheets on this octagonal clothesline that was on a pole stuck in the ground. I would help her take in the laundry-loving the fresh smell bundled in my arms.

The tremendous pleasure I enjoy from hanging and gathering the laundry and sheets comes from the family memories of watching my mother and my aunt hang their laundry. It was the best way to dry things-even after electric dryers were commonplace.

When I was first married the first thing I asked for when I had a home was a clothesline. This is where I would hang out diapers for all five of my babies to come. After Gary and I were married and we moved into our current home in Mendocino, the first thing I asked him for was a clothesline, which Gary proudly built for me in the flower garden nestled under tall redwood trees. I love the ritual and visceral, earthy experience of hanging wet clothes and sheets to dry. When I walk to and from my clothesline I appreciate my good fortune as I listen to the birds and distant ocean-the quiet of a country life.

And today, Gary will repair one of the clotheslines broken when a marauding black bear got tangled up in the clothes I had hanging on the line in his retreat from destructive behavior in the henhouse.

So yes, I have many memories of hanging sheets on the clothesline.