Post #62: Remembrance of Things Past

 Monday, February 8, 2021

We woke to pea soup fog at 7 a.m. today with every surface dripping and damp. The family from South Carolina on Pleiades wants to travel up the east coast all the way to Maine.  I don’t have the heart to tell them that this fog often can be what it looks like on the coast of Maine for days at a time in the summer. September, on the other hand, is usually glorious!

We’ve got to travel 50 miles today with light winds but calm water.  So the fleet motor-sailed at 6 knots for four hours along the western coast of New Providence Island and then another four hours more out of the sight of any land. When we were first planning this trip, I thought this type of sailing might bother me, perhaps even make me anxious, but I take comfort looking around to see the other boats on our same journey.  I know if there’s any kind of problem, everyone will pitch in to help. 

Given the calm sea state and prospect of eight hours of listening to the relentless chug, chug, chug of the diesel engine, I decided to do our laundry. We’ve had access to coin-op washers and dryers ever since we left home around Labor Day. But from now on, as we reach the more remote islands of the Exumas, I’ll need to wash our clothes by hand in the kitchen sink.  

This brings back memories of doing the washing with my Nana, my mother’s mother.  She did her laundry with a washboard and bar soap or in a ringer washing machine until (and I remember this being a really, really big deal) she got a top-loading automatic washer. Oftentimes when I visited her she’d have me join her as she hung out the clothes to dry on the line.  She’d take one end of Grampie’s shirt and I’d take the other and we’d twist and twist the cloth as hard as we could until the shirt twisted upon itself, squeezing out every drop of water possible. I don’t even want to think about how many hours she must have spent ironing out all the wrinkles we made with all that twisting! 

I remember, too, how she’d take the wet dish towels and spread them out over the branches of the yew bushes in her backyard. After they dried, the fresh aroma of evergreen and outdoors would permeate her tiny kitchen.

Sometimes I wonder what my own grandchildren will remember about me when they are 65.