Look for the Unlived Lives you've already lived

That's me, recently out of the army, 1970, sitting on my older brother's lap, clowning for the camera. Takes me back to the '50s, to that backyard where I fought many WWII battles with my friends. All of us, sons of WWII veterans.

What should have been long gone by the time this pic was taken was that clothesline. A relic from the '50's when mom and dad could afford a used washing machine, but not a dryer. Every weekend, Mom would have that clothesline filled with loads of wet clothes drying in the sun.

I would come in the back door to the house, finding Mom sitting at her mangle, ironing bed sheets on a machine like this one, a hand-me-down from her parents. 

I would squeeze by her and the mangle, the fresh smell of those sheets filling the air, on my way to the kitchen counter for two or three (four maybe?) of mom's fresh-baked, made-from-scratch, still-warm peanut butter cookies.

​Finally, in the early '60's, the mangle was gone, and in its place was a new washer, this time with a matching dryer. 

The clothesline? I wouldn't be surprised to find it still there.

​That's one unlived life I was fortunate to have lived.

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