Pinafores & Semaphores

 

Rivka is my neighbor.  My bedroom window faces her porch, about 15 meters away.  Though we’ve been neighbors for almost 9 years (since I moved to my current house), I’ve never spoken to Rivka.  I don’t know what she does for a living, though I recall being told once by another neighbor that Rikva was an actress (or had been an actress).   I don’t know how old she is, though I’d guess she’s in her 70’s.  I do know she lives alone, and that she almost never has any visitors, or at least none that I’ve seen.   Mainly I see Rivka hanging her laundry on the lines on her porch opposite my bedroom window, and taking the laundry down from the lines on her porch opposite my bedroom window. 

 

During the time of the novel Coronavirus scare, in the spring of 2020, when we were confined to our houses on virtual lockdown, I found myself marking the otherwise indistinguishable days by observing and photographing Rivka’s laundry.  I woke up each morning to welcome another day with no agenda, no plans, nowhere to go, looking forward to opening the shutters to see whether Rivka had left any laundry on the line the night before, or whether she had been up before I was, and had already hung out some shirts or maybe a few towels to break the monotony.  Rivka’s laundry became an obsession for me.  I would peek out my bedroom window periodically during the day to see if she had left me any surprises – brightly colored sweaters, perhaps a night gown, or a rainbow of  pastel camisoles.  One morning I was greeted by a lone pair of black panties, hanging in front of her door, an orange and white cat patrolling on the overhanging roof above.  Another day, there was a riot of socks on the line in front of her door.  Once, I spied a small, handmade cloth facemask hanging on the line.  Some days there was no laundry at all, only a sentry cat manning his guard post. 

 

I looked forward to seeing the orderly, almost compulsive, way in which she hung her laundry, carefully pinned and spaced, with sweaters meticulously spread on towels over the low wall of the porch.  I noticed that as items dried, she would take them down and rearrange the remaining laundry to take advantage of the spots directly in the sun.  For me, during this period of potential boredom, Rivka’s laundry was like a serialized silent movie.  Each day brought a new episode.  And, even if it’s not true that Rivka had been in theater, she was now staging a show for my benefit, directing the jeans and T-shirts, bed sheets and towels in their roles, dancing on the line and waving at me from across the street.