We are in Gijón, Spain. Ron is carefully (because he’s always careful) hanging laundry on the rack attached to our our third floor window. There are no clothespins in our air bnb and there’s no way we know to the courtyard below. The doorbell rings. Who could possibly be ringing? No one knows us here. Ron opens the door where a tiny, animated woman is speaking in rapid Asturian dialect. She has clearly put on some lipstick for us, and while her aim was a bit off, the effect was delightful. Ron kept throwing up his hands, trying to explain in his pidgin Italian/English/Spanglish that he didn’t understand. I came to the door and she told me to come upstairs to show me something.
i entered her immaculate apartment, decorated in glorious Rococo 1950’s splendor. Blue velvet dining chairs, lace everywhere, dolls in Victorian dressed perched in perfect miniature maroon seats, I tried to drink it in as I walked her gleaming tile floors. Where were we going? What had we done? She led me into the kitchen, where her laundry hung out the window on an identical rack. “Look!” she exclaimed. “I have the same rack. It’s perfect. You don’t have to worry about things falling down. Nothing ever falls down.” I looked at her two baskets of clothespins and explained we don’t have any, that’s why Ron was being so careful. “Don’t worry!” she gestured towards a group of shirts on hangers, the shoulders perfectly aligned, every shirt hanging at attention in a row like obedient schoolchildren. A voice inside said she had to be a Virgo. “Just put things on a hanger. These are amazing. Nothing will fall. You don’t need clothespins.”
Thus blessed, I thanked her. Not so much for the clothes hanging information, but for that ineffable something that made her dress up, ring our bell and offer us this local wisdom. We were both enriched, and I will carry forever the memory of the patron saint of laundry protecting us from above.