This short story is a reflective piece as the narrator remembers her childhood .
experiences, using the symbol of the "washing line" to remind the reader about the .
changes in one's life and the strength of memories. .
The first person narrator remembers the washing line "first", with its "silver skeletal .
arms". This image is the central image of her reminiscence. She describes the garden .
surrounding it and the "best climbing tree", which was "festooned with socks and .
knickers and shirts". The nostalgic tone is established as we are caught up in her .
world of colour and nature as she notes the "almond tree", the nectarine tree's "hard, .
bird-bitten fruit" and other flora. .
Yet the reader is abruptly moved on in time in with the ambiguous line, "Today, .
however, it is bare". At first it seems we have returned to the present but we soon .
realise that her thoughts have wandered to another day in her childhood, when she .
climbed the washing line and sat in her "exalted position, almost sky-high". Here we .
share her feelings of joy and excitement as she surveys the world she knows. The .
level of language and sentence structure at this point becomes almost child-like in its .
conversational tone, simplicity and matter-of-fact statements, "Three little boys live .
there; I have stood on the fence and talked to them, even been in their house once." .
The reader becomes caught in the moment with the young girl who is feeling "frilly .
and nearly as pink as the bathers" she was wearing. As the narrator describes, in the .
present tense and in the voice of the child, her climb "out along one skeletal arm" .
until she swings "upside-down" the reader is swept along with her euphoria and .
movement. We are captured in the moment as the "earth spins below" her and she is .
"flying". .
Once again the reader is abruptly moved on to an image of an "older, more age-warped .
washing line" that depicts the passage of time since she once soared in the .
