Placing clean laundry on the grass was foreign to me, until I moved to Costa Rica. Every Monday morning I can go out to my small patch of backyard in the city and find at least one or two dishtowels splayed on the wet lawn. One of the true sources of pride in this culture is clean laundry: White shirts, sparkling school uniforms, and even old dishrags.

Addison has three nannies. Each rotates during the week; each has special talents and quirks and gifts I get to watch and enjoy over the three days they spend with us. I can see over time how each woman offers my home a bit of who they are. Two of the ladies are more like grandmothers. These women come from the country and no one has a dryer. Few have washers. Plus there’s often not a lot of room or time to hang things on the line before the rain comes. Laundry is almost an artistic outlet.

The nanny on Sunday/Monday will collect the towels from the kitchen and go to the pila - the laundry sink - and apply rub this blue bar of soap all over it and then proceed to scrub it with a brush. This ritual is not far removed from washing laundry in the river and beating it on the rocks. Some of the towels get soaked for a day or two. (If the nanny leaves before getting these soaking things out on to the lawn and I miss them, the smell can get funky.) The towels then lay out on the grass for the rain to beat them into the final round of cleanliness.

When I first moved here, I may have huffed out to the lawn and thought “they” were crazy to leave the laundry in the backyard. Now I can smile and appreciate the story that goes behind it and see how I do the same things with cultural traditions I’ve learned due to history, fear, weather, and common sense. If I could take one these nannies up to live through a winter, they’d think I was bonkers with all the “tricks” I’d do so the pipes couldn’t freeze and mittens wouldn’t get lost.

If the Sunday/Monday nanny gets a load to dry before she leaves, she gleams and almost bursts with pride in how wonderful mother nature is in getting the dirt out. Her smile energizes me for the rest of the day, and I have a funny urge to go and scoop her some pistachio ice cream and make her a cup of coffee. Perhaps the nannies think I’m a bit on the lackadaisical when it comes to laundry and stain removal. But I’m thrilled to let them pick up where I drop off. Around here, there’s never a shortage of cleaning - limpiando - to do.