What my mother used to say

"She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue." — Proverbs 31:26

My mother used to say that you can tell what a woman is carrying by the way she hangs laundry.

I did not understand this when I was young. I thought it was one of her observations that sounded meaningful but did not actually mean anything, and I told her so once, and she gave me the look she gave me when I was being young on purpose, and she did not explain.

I understand it now. You can tell. The woman who snaps the sheets hard and hangs them straight is working something out. The woman who moves slowly and forgets to pin the corners is carrying something she has not put down yet. The woman who talks to herself while she hangs is fine. It is the quiet ones who are not pinning the corners that you watch.

My mother noticed people. She noticed them the way some people notice weather, as a thing that was always happening around her that she could not stop paying attention to. She noticed the woman at the post office who had stopped wearing her wedding ring. She noticed the man at church who sang louder in the hymns the week after his mother died. She noticed me, coming home from school on the days when something had happened that I was not going to tell her about, and she did not ask. She waited. She waited the way a woman waits who knows that asking too early is the same as not asking at all.

I am hanging laundry this morning, which is a Monday task but I am a day late because the anniversary took the morning yesterday. The sheets are on the line and I snapped them and I pinned the corners and I think my mother would say I am doing all right.

Mama, I heard you. It took me forty years, but I heard you.

Ruby keeps a collection of prayers at her kitchen table. You can find them here.