Most people don’t iron any more. There are dry cleaners on every corner, an array of no-iron fabrics, and –as is my case – the untroubled willingness to wear wrinkly clothing. These have combined to make ironing a forgotten chore, a lost art.
My mother and father both ironed. Dad ironed in morning chaos. Breakfast was being made, spilled, and eaten. Kids bumbled about in unfocused preparation for school before the bus honked outside. In this confusion Dad often opened the ironing board to iron his pants before work. He called it ‘pressing his trousers’. Dad pressed his trousers and he pressed his dollars. Dad liked nice crisp bills. His ironing money was one of several entertaining features of Dad’s morning ironing.
Mom’s ironing was less colorful. She was a serene ironer, often unconsciously humming. Mom ironed at a different time of day, when rambunctious offspring were less likely to trip over the chord and bring down the board and iron. Dad was a stand-up ironer but Mom opened the board halfway and positioned a chair beside it. That was the first step in the ritual. She spread Dad’s shirts on the dining table one by one. She sprinkled each with water and then rolled it up. When she had all the shirts rolled into moist balls, and arranged on the end of the ironing board, she started ironing.
Once I was standing beside the dining table, almost tall enough to see over the top. My noisy sister and brothers were quiet. Napping perhaps. Mom was ironing and a small propeller plane was stirring up the air outside. It was a profoundly peaceful moment. Both prop planes and ironing seem peaceful to me to this day.
The ironing scene was a little different in our next house. We moved to the Quonset hut when I was in 2nd grade, just before the Christmas play. That house had marvelous details. The drawers in the counter between the kitchen and dining room, for instance, went all the way through. You could open them from either room. There was a hook in the fireplace that swung out, so you could hang an iron pot over the fire. If you had an iron pot. The kitchen had a split Dutch door. There were built-in closet shelves that we climbed up into and a round coat closet and a built-in bed in the living room.
This fascinating house had a fascinating ironing board. Open a closet and pull down the board. It was a Murphy bed ironing board!
Honestly, I think a 2nd grader is too young to iron, but all during my childhood my mother mistook me for an adult. I was allowed the privilege of ironing on the Murphy bed ironing board.
It’s no surprise that I burnt myself. It happened during a tricky maneuver between buttons. The side of the iron caught me. For many years I carried a trapezoidal burn scar on my forearm. Mom continued to iron in the Quonset hut but I didn’t have the same enthusiasm for it.
I have no recollection of any ironing activity in our next house, a wonderful one in San Gabriel California. I’ve plenty of interesting laundry memories, but I think Mom must have ironed when we were in school.
Mom ironed a few years later in Manhattan Beach California. I know because it annoyed me. I was a teenager by that time. Ironing seemed a form of gender subjugation. While I tried my best to tear away the chains of repression strangling my poor mother, she just smiled and hummed and ironed my father’s work shirts. I pushed her to stand up for her rights. She set the iron up so it wouldn’t burn the board and mildly reproved me. “Your father indulges my idiosyncratic preferences,” she told me. “And I’m glad to indulge his.” So that was that. An interesting lesson in harmonious marital dynamics was there if I’d been receptive.
I ventured off to college and set up a life of my own. Ironing wasn’t involved.
My parents and younger siblings moved again. They bought a house in a NY suburb. Inexplicably this house had a heavy-duty chain suspended from the ceiling in the dining room. It could support weight. My grown brothers swung on that chain, kicking off from the fireplace wall out into the room. It was fun. I did it too.
Time had passed but my mother was still happy to indulge my father’s idiosyncratic preferences. She’d set up the ironing board at half height by that chain and settle herself in a dining chair. As she finished each shirt, she put it on a hanger and hung it on a link of the chain. Mom ironed and hummed until finally the whole mound of moist shirt balls was gone and a chain full of freshly ironed shirts hung ready for the closet.
End note:
My mother doesn’t iron anymore. My father died more than 15 years ago and now Mom wears no-iron garments. I don’t know anyone who irons.
I’m on a mission. Let’s not let ironing slip from our racial memory. I encourage all to contribute anecdotes and interesting ironing facts as comments.
