Memories Of My Mother’s Clotheslines

As a tribute to my mother on this Mother’s Day who I dearly miss, I am reposting this story that I wrote several years ago, thinking of her and remembering how much my travels remind me of her. This story does not contain that much information about my mom as its focus is on how I remember her when seeing and photographing clotheslines. This experience made me so curious about what is no longer a common practice in the US. More importantly for me, it is such a wonderful memory of both my childhood and my mother’s flawless clotheslines…

In my travels to Portugal and Cuba, I was struck by the use of clotheslines hanging from apartment dwellings that immediately took me back to when I was a child living both in the US and in Puerto Rico seeing my mom hang our washed clothes and linen on clotheslines in the backyard. The first time I had this reaction was when I was in Cuba and it immediately compelled me to take photos. To my surprise, when arriving in Portugal this practice was in abundance in cities such as Lisbon and Porto…