Pressing Matters

When I was a little girl I stayed at  my grandmother's house while my parents worked. I remembered my Nannie's "ironing day"; there was a ritual about the whole event.  She would set up the ironing board in the kitchen and would sprinkle all of the the shirts and articles of clothing to be ironed, with water from a re-purposed soda bottle; it was fitted with a perforated top held into the bottle by a corkstopper. The sprinkled clothes were then methodically rolled and placed, one at a time, into a large zippered plastic bag.  I would sit on a stool in the kitchen and watch this weekly occurence as the zippered bag grew smaller and the freshly pressed row of shirts hanging on a hook over the kitchen door grew and grew. To me it was all magic, I loved the order that was created. I've always had an affection for ironing. I love irons, ironing boards and all of the related paraphanalia. Lately, however, I've let the inventory in my own ironing basket grow and grow until it held a mountain of ironing that was threatening to avalanche. Why? I can't tell you. I took the bull by the horns the other day and worked my way through it all... piece by piece. The feeling of accomplishment was amazing. This morning I was greeted by an unfamiliar sight in the laundry room when I entered, an empty ironing basket! All of a sudden I felt connected to those days, long ago, when my grandmother would tirelessly work her way to the bottom of that plastic bag full of damp, sprinkled, rolled-up clothes; I can only imagine how good she must have felt to have her work done... at least for an all too brief bit of time!

Life is Good!