I have been writing personal essays since I began writing 39 years ago. I'd love to sell the rights to them; if you're interested, let me know.
Check back on this page often; I will add content frequently.
--Karyn Zweifel
The older I get, the more I cherish homely things. Petunias, for example. Their simple colors and careless blooms seemed too common when I was younger. Now petunias flank my front door. Purple and white striped. Purple because that’s my daughter’s favorite color. White stripes because those were close at hand as my three-year-old slept in his carseat and my husband waited in the driver’s seat at the garden store.
Hanging out the laundry is something else I used to view with disdain. But two years ago, I asked for a clothesline for Mother’s Day. We’d had one in the backyard of our first home. Rusted metal poles, the old fashioned kind, settled in cement. They’d acquired a funny tilt as they aged; I was afraid to put too much weight on them for fear that they would slowly fold inwards upon each other, a stately dance of decay.
Fifteen years ago when I was newly married I had a small house, a demanding vocation and a new dryer, a wedding gift from my mother-in-law, bless her. I also had, I see in hindsight, the priceless luxury of leisurely thought, all alone, my toes intertwined on top of my desk.
Now, my thinking time is more restricted. An ordinary afternoon consists of planning the best route to an obscure softball park in five o’clock traffic while fielding “why” questions from a three-year-old and focusing on the unbridled enthusiasm of a healthy preteen. It’s sandwiched somewhere in there. Did I mention keeping an ear out for that suspicious “ping” of my minivan’s engine?
This is why I decided I needed a clothesline for Mother’s Day 1999. For the Zen of it.
When I hoist that neon yellow basket, ergonomically curved to fit my hip, I am connected. I sway down the back steps, recalling a small unstudied kindness. When my mother was a child, she would sometimes look out the window to see her father, a gruff and ordinarily not particularly progressive man, patiently pinning up socks and jumpers and underwear and shirts. The basket, you see, was too heavy for my grandmother to lift. She had back troubles.
My mother remembers my grandfather flouting the conventions of suburbia circa 1946, and I am one with his rebellious spirit. It was a small flouting, but defiance all the same.
As I pin the sheets across the smooth plastic lines (six on this deluxe pull-out model which attaches on the other side of the yard, on the swingset) I am catapulted back to my own childhood. I remember screaming and playing tag in and out of the billowing clouds of sheets. I don’t remember ever being told not to, or of a single piece of laundry that landed in the Kansas suburb’s dust because of my play.
The scent of detergent and the cool sweetness of grass on my feet delights me in a simple, homely way. It is out here, with a jet tracing a silent swathe across the jewel bright sky, that I remember to breathe deeply again. To let my mind wander beyond the next moment, the next meal, the next call of distress.
It’s at its very best in the way early hours of the morning. The air is cooler, not yet ill-used by the day and the city. But no matter what hour I sling that basket up on my hip and march down the stairs, there is one constant: no human being follows me. It is as if the back door threshold serves as a magical barrier. It cannot be crossed. Not by a twelve-year-old arguing for another overnight visit, not by a husband with a checkbook in his hand and a question on his face. It is a splendid phenomenon. Even the telephone rings dimly, a feeble pull too weak to draw me in.
Of course, there are drawbacks. The dog invariably follows me out, tangling in my legs like a wicked sprite. Barely out of puppyhood, Zoe will sometimes even playfully snap at my ankles before her own private doggy business carries her off elsewhere in the yard.
Some of that business is another source of occasional consternation in the Eden of my laundry. Zoe deposits little gifts for me in an uncannily straight line up and down the length of the clothesline. But I have learned to be spry of foot as I breathe deeply and luxuriate in my solitary thoughts.
My clothesline is also a sort of atonement for me. After much internal struggle, I substituted my zippy little fuel efficient sedan for, yes, I hate to say it -- a minivan. It holds more children than I can in sanity transport. It has enough room to separate warring siblings. It holds all the detritus of my life, in addition to three pairs of shoes (whose are they, anyway?), a bat and a matchbox car collection. The little cars and trucks zoom back and forth delightfully on the floor as I make my daily rounds.
I know the van is bad for the ozone. I shrink with fear from the whirring numbers which appear on the pump during my weekly fill up. It is not efficient but gosh, it has become such an integral part of my life. So I hang out my laundry to appease the ozone gods. I don’t know if my personal little energy credit exchange program really balances out, but it gives me some small sense of penance paid. Let’s not talk about disposable diapers, okay?
After a mere fifteen minutes of solitude, pinning up my family’s socks, jeans, t-shirts and underwear, I am ready for company again. So I move to the front porch, if I have time, where family members do not fear to join me. I nestle my son in my lap, smelling his unique sweet-sour scent (when did he last have a bath?), and smile approval at my daughter spinning roundovers on the front lawn. Life is sweet. Especially the homely parts. My petunias smile and nod their heads in agreement.
(C) 2002 Karyn Zweifel All rights reserved; call or email for reprint agreement
When my daughter Kathryn was an infant, I loved her with a fierceness that made my whole body quiver with its intensity. Just thinking about the possibility of harm sent adrenaline coursing through my veins like a cavalry charge. I could, I was sure, stop a bus with one arm, crush a rampaging dog with my foot, keep reckless drivers away by the sheer force of my will.
Kathryn's every cry galvanized me into action; the slightest whimper shocked me from the deepest sleep. Remembering my agony of helplessness in the face of her wanting -- helpless to know what to do, how to comfort -- still has the power to make my gut clutch up.
Her misery was mine. Completely. Panicked, I promised her ice cream, sports cars, ponies and circuses. To no avail. When my repertoire of comforting things was exhausted, I even on occasion wailed in concert with her.
The fierceness of my love began to abate just as the intensity was about to burn me out. It was such a gradual process, I barely noticed it at first. Soon I discovered a nipple would assuage a minor hurt. To this day, when Kathryn comes crying with a bump or a scrape, I feel a visceral tugging deep within my breast as my body remembers her infancy.
Slowly, imperceptibly, the small cries of pain, frustration, anger, have lost their capacity to rip through my heart. As Kathryn grew less helpless, more mobile, I was no longer the sum total of her world. I relinquished responsibility for every hurt. And I could no longer claim credit for all the pleasures.
If I had kept that intensity of love, I would be dead by now. If each bump, fall, scratch and bite had wounded me as they did in her infancy, I would have bled to death.
Now, there's more sympathy than empathy wrapped up along with the Big Bird Band-aids. This way, I can afford to let Kathryn out of my sight. I can bear the thought of her exploring the wide world with its many tricks and turns and stumbling blocks.
But at odd moments, that intensity, that fierceness, strikes my heart again. Snatching my breath away with its sudden heat. These are the moments when, in the middle of a business meeting, my eyes glaze over in the struggle to resist a nearly irresistible urge to find her and hold her. These are the moments that come, unbidden, and compel me to swoop down on Kathryn, disrupting her play with a powerful squeeze. Or, more often, the moments when I stifle the desire to touch her, hold her, and I simply watch her while tears well up in my eyes.
I have never loved anyone more fiercely.
When she is fast asleep, I creep into her room, pick my way through the minefield of toys and clothes and books, to watch the rise and fall of her chest. My mother used to do this. Loving mothers everywhere do this. Ostensibly to make sure the covers are in order, but I believe it's for something else.
It's to recover that intensity of loving. To recall that fierce joy.
And as I watch Kathryn sleep, I sometimes run my fingertips through her hair softly. My fingertips fairly tingle with the strength of my love for her. All the power of my loving is focused in my fingers as I lightly stroke her hair, sweaty from her dream play.
My husband told me once, years ago, what comfort that simple caress brought him when he was sick. Smoothing his hair with my fingertips, he said, made him feel loved. Safe. Now I know why. My mother, too, stroked my hair with her fingers full of that aching mother-love.
Now I pass that along to my daughter. These mothering hands of mine, so capable in a day full of shoelaces and cheese sandwiches and stubborn skate straps. So strong when a child's hand needs holding or a dog's leash needs restraining, so nimble, utilitarian, gentle; these mothering hands are also full of magic, full of the healing power of the fiercest love of all.
Copyright (C) 1993 Karyn Zweifel