The Washer Woman

She was a widow and a washer woman who lived with her small children in a cottage on the edge of town, near a cool spring. She gathered the clothes each morning from the families in the village, sorted the darks from the lights, the shirts and pants and long skirts from the bedclothes. She set up her pots in the yard, gathered wood from the pasture across the road, and made her own soap from leftover kitchen grease and lye.

She boiled the whites first, then added bluing to bring out the sparkle. The lye soap helped take out the red dirt stains from the work shirts. The pants were scrubbed on the washboard. Each piece was wrung out and draped across the fence to sun dry. The work was hard but it kept her family fed and a roof over their head.