Decimated

Re-threading the clothesline with a new cord wasn’t hard.

It was a simple science. You cut the old cord and pulled it out of the spider web-filled holes and then you re-threaded a brand new one.

I observed my handiwork at the end. The grey PVC glistened gently in the sun, perfectly taut and strong, it’s intact surface ready for all the loads of washing I could throw at it.

I looked down at my feet, at the remnants of the old cord I had just pulled out. It was not a proper clothesline cord, but an old rope and sun and rain had worn the fibers down to a tangle of strings. In places, it hung by a thread. It was mottled brown with dirt, and sticky with old cobwebs. Its decimated shape brought me a familiar pain.

Time did so much damage.

My mind fast-forwarded the clock and I saw remnants of cracked PVC. I saw plastic that had once been supple and soft, become brittle and frail; wire that had once stood strong now unraveled and frayed and thinned to the point of extinction. A figure on the ground waiting for disposal, back to the place where all things and people went when time got the better of them.

So much effort went into everything. Into threading and rethreading, renewing and recharging, being erected and disposed. A cycle as never-ending as laundry.

I pondered on the point of it all: scorching summers, wet winters; pants that went from bell-shaped to skin-tight and back again; pink onesies that morphed into licensed t-shirts; pajamas that got more fleecy and less lacey with every year that passed; lone socks left with an uncertain future.

Back in the here and now the cord is still taut, I reminded myself.

The clothes still need a place to hang.