I attended an oral story swap the other night where a woman about my age told a story of wash day when she was a child. The story made me think of memories I have that are so different from the life I live today.

Have you ever hung clean, wet clothes outside to dry? Felt the sun on your shoulders and the movement of your back muscles as you bend and straighten. Pulled another item from the basket at your feet. Fumbled in the clothes pin bag that is looped over the line and grabbed another pin. Carefully arranged the item and pressed the pin down catching the corner with the corner of the item next to it.  I always liked to hang similar items together. Shirts and tee shirts hung upside down, each side seam clipped together with the last or next shirt. Pants hung from the waist with the clothes pin clipped at the seam on the side, and towels, the easiest of all, each side clipped with the towels on either side of it. 

Then the sun would do its work and finally the best part. As you remove the clean, dry clothes to fold and return to the basket at your feet; you pull them close and breathe in deeply. You smell the freshness, that unique fragrance of clean clothes dried in the sun. Mmmm…. 

I don’t hang my clothes out any more, like most everyone else in America, I use a dryer. But I have never smelled anything like the fragrance of sun-dried clothes in any fabric softener and somedays when I am folding clothes from the dryer, I pull the fresh dry item close and sniff and remember the fragrance of the sun.

My friend quoted JM Barrie to me the other day when we are talking about something or other that happened in the past, “God gave us memory so we could have roses in December.”  Not all my memories are roses or sun-dried clothes but enough are that I remember life is a mixture of good and bad. The bad memories warn us and the good memories sustain us through the bad.  Memories are the framework that we use to make sense of and take action in the present. Remember the good; the bad will stick with you and be there when you need it.

Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. – Eph 4:8