to-wel or not to .........

It's our first winter in our new home i.e. the 50 yr old house that we have newly made our home. It's brrrrrr..... cold and everything gets cold by evening- the couch, the countertops, the carpet. The tile kitchen floor has converted my mom to someone who wears indoor footwear, which she had resisted all along. Amidst all this, my dad's biggest concern is over towels. Yep! bath towels that don't feel dry and crisp but are damp and cold to the touch bother him to no end. So he's taken it upon himself to put them out to dry on the clothesline in our backyard.  As soon as my mother saw the backyard in this house, she exclaimed with relief, 'Ah, I can now hang my sarees out to dry and don't have to worry about detangling the twisted knotted heap that they become in the dryer'. So we had a clothesline tied for my mother to use. But I didn't realize it'd get used this much, that too by my dad. He's confounded over how towels that are machine washed and dried, that come out hot and fresh and then get folded and put away get cold and somewhat limp. He constantly fusses over their semi-dry state, and hangs them out to dry in nature. Every couple of hours he moves them over on the line to accommodate the shifting sunlight.  Yes this is winter in glorious California and we do get some sunny days. But the sun is just there, the wind is so chilly, there's hardly any warmth even in direct sunlight. So, after a few hours outside, the towels come back feeling pretty chilly and that irks my dad again. Between his morning and late afternoon walks, between the times he spends with some friends he's made here, going up to the community centre or saying his prayers, he can mostly be seen fussing over his towels.
   Many times when we are looking for my dad to join us for lunch,and he is not to be seen, My mother jokes' He must have gone in search of Surya Bhagavan( Sun God)' or ' I saw him last near the fence moving the towels to the far end, by now he must be in the neighbor's yard '. I laugh very hard imagining my neighbor's amazement if he ever caught my dad in his backyard or picturing my dad enthusiastically hanging clothes on a line right next to a puzzled Mr.Golden Sun - as if from a colorful page out of a children's story book.  Thank God for the earth's rotation, he gets to sleep while he loans the sun to the remaining half of the globe.  If those towels ever came to life, they'd give him a hug for all the fussing and pampering.

      In the beginning this obsession with drying towels annoyed me. Later I started finding it very funny. But in a month from now when my parents will travel back home, that empty clothesline will make me very sad, I'll miss you dad - But I'll be glad to realize you , your towels and the Sun God will all be together.