clothesline

#32

1 June 2025

Dear Jana,

When I was 19 I studied at English L’Abri¹ for a term. I gave up my library job and paused college and flew from LAX to London where my cousin Luke met me and we took a train to Liss. Luke was visiting his oldest sister Dawn, who was a L’Abri worker, which is like being a missionary, tutor, and chef all rolled into one.

I remember the kitchen slowly filling with people whose accents betrayed many countries— Britain, Sweden, Germany, South Africa, Netherlands, Canada, America. The tea cart filled up with tea and day old pastries from a local bakery. The table filled up with letter tiles as we played quick rounds of Bananagrams. After that, L’Abri filled up and gradually took over my heart as well. I was shown to my dorm. My bed was in the window alcove across from Alexandra (from Malta), overlooking the back lawn where countless games of football (soccer) and volleyball would be played at tea break, at 11 and 4 o’clock each day. I was shown the Bakehouse lecture hall, the library, the phone booth under the stairs, the mail table by the front door. Just past the pantry was Dawn’s door up to the Top Flat, where Luke was constructing built-in bookshelves for her living space under the eaves of the roof. I’m still a bit traumatized by games of mafia, but my fondest memories of her flat are Shakespeare readings, poetry readings, and listening to Switchfoot while setting the table.

The term embarked on a voyage of daily routine. Each day held morning work and afternoon study. Spun honey on toast, boiled eggs, roasted granola, with a serving of George Herbert over breakfast in the dining room. Discussion lunches in the kitchen or the pump house or the schoolhouse or the stables. Evening meals followed by french press coffee and a game of Carcassonne. Monday book lunches, Friday night lectures, Sunday high teas. Thursday was our day off, and we’d pick up paper bag lunches to picnic in the Downs, stroll footpaths to Petersfield, or head to London or Portsmouth or Hay-on-wye.

Sometimes my work was playing with children or helping prepare lunch. When I scrubbed the mens’ toilets I would sing classic Disney “I’m Wishing” and “Once Upon a Dream” and “So This is Love” to warn unsuspecting shower-seekers. But my favorite chore of all was hanging laundry out to dry with Lois. There were racks in the attic, basement, linen closet, and above the auga (we’d stick to towels there and dry underwear in less auspicious locales). When the sun came out, we strung bedsheets across the lines beyond the sunken garden.

Though I wore a default smile in public, I would meet with my tutor Wade in his study and mostly cry. I will always grieve the sundering of love. How can I not, even trusting now that all suffering has a purpose? I was assigned Habakkuk and Larry Crabb and grappled with all the goodness buried under sorrow. I live the questions still: How can I love others as myself if I reject myself? Why does my soul exact a standard (perfection) that only One can ever meet? The year before I’d read Till We Have Faces, and felt like Orual accusing the gods, but also like Psyche aching for an invisible presence. The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing.

That winter term sank into me. The Manor House, Indian curries, chais, hearthfires, footpaths, pubs, and evensongs. Now I carry it all with me, dousing spores on everything I make here on the prairie. I hang our laundry on the collapsible kitchen rack, and above the stairs, and when the sun comes out, I string bedsheets on the clothesline overlooking the sunken garden.

Once Upon a December (another princess-y song I still like to sing)

1. If you’d like to learn more, watch this documentary about L’Abri Fellowship.