Finding blissful moments in domesticity

I’ve been working on a video tribute as a surprise gift for a couple who will soon celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. The couple’s five children each sat with me, video camera poised, to share their favorite recollections of their Mom and Dad. The siblings grew up in a pretty normal mid-20th Century household: dad worked, mom stayed home, all the kids’ memories are happy ones involving camping, fishing, sailing and ironing.

Ironing, you ask? Yes, dear hearts. Ironing. One of the women, when asked how best she remembered her Mom, told me: She was a great ironer.

At first, the comment worried me. How would a woman who devoted her life to raising five children in a blissful home feel about having her daughter sum up her life through her ironing? Quickly, sadness overcame concern. I thought about how many great accomplishments most women achieve, including women who spend their lives in the home, and the thought of having such efforts overlooked by a daughter who only could recall her Mom at the ironing board depressed me. The poor, unappreciated mother!

I shared the tale of the “great ironer” with my coworker who subsequently shared a family story with me; it seems her grandmother was a “great ironer.” Her granny ironed everything, she told me, even the cloth diapers! It was then that I recalled my mother-in-law, also a great ironer (and a working mother). I admit I was a bit intimidated when I learned my future husband’s mother ironed all his clothes – including his blue jeans. I wasn’t opposed to ironing wrinkled jeans, but she was steaming creases into them. That, I thought, was just a bit over the top.

I consider myself to be a pretty good ironer; after all, there’s a technique to the job my sometimes chauvinistic sons call “women’s work.” (Trust me, they both know how – and when – to iron). I was ironing tonight, in fact, ruminating over these great ironers – the diaper ironer, the jeans ironer, and the great ironer soon to be married 50 years, and it was somewhere between the gray button down and the black slacks that it occurred to me why ironing is an activity that attracts a certain kind of woman.

Ironing is repetitive thus, in a way, it relaxes. This can be a great benefit to a woman in charge of a houseful of children. But more than that, ironing isn’t mentally demanding, which frees the mind to drift. An ironer with a stack of wrinkled laundry can look upon the chore as an opportunity to take a mental vacation from the mundane, to reflect on what’s good or troubling about life, to dream about a far off place that exists, perhaps, only in the imagination. Furthermore, ironing often brings alone time. Accomplished ironers understand that a pile of crinkled clothing doesn’t represent burden; it’s free time, a chance to gather one’s thoughts, to look within, to climb from the den of domesticity if only for twenty minutes, like with meditation or yoga.

You probably never thought about ironing this way, dear hearts. But I’d bet a mother of five who’s a “great ironer” probably has.