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.
27 December 2007
24 December 2007
My Christmas Miracle
A year ago or so, my friend died. Her passing left her family, her friends, her coworkers, and me, lost.
Not that any of us hadn’t anticipated her death. We had, even though whenever we spent time with her or each other we draped ourselves in a childlike hopefulness that denies the reality of terminal illness. We hoped like children who believe Santa Claus can transcend physics in order to drop a toy at the home of every child on earth in one night. We clung to promises offered by repeated FDA-approved treatments or subversive non-FDA-approved programs. We prayed for a miracle – even a simple, garden variety miracle that, in a broken world seemed within the realm of possibility. Yet, her health steadily declined.
Throughout her illness, my prayers for my friend changed. At first, my pleas were for her recovery. Later, after her brief remission lapsed and treatments got more aggressive, I prayed for God to give her strength, and, I prayed He’d give her husband and children strength too. Toward the end I suppose I gave up on the elusive miracle and prayed for solace for all of us, most especially for my friend. Hours before she passed, my friend said two things to me. First, she said, “It’s so hard.” And then she followed with, “I am not afraid.” Her courage was immense.
In the months since my friend’s death, I have traveled a path of transition. It has been a hard road and many times along the way, I have been very afraid. Whenever I’ve needed courage not to abandon the transition that, I hope, will lead me to a more meaningful existence, I’ve recalled the final words of my friend: It’s so hard and I am not afraid. Her words give me solace because, during transition, there is a death-like process that requires you to you leave behind the comforts of what’s easy or familiar to venture to a land perhaps you’ve only glimpsed in your dreams, like heaven. Leaving what you know … changing … it is hard.
The daily miracle of life, of course, is that we get time – time to heal, time to cry, time to ponder change, time to muster courage, time to reflect back on friends who through their life and in their death, helped you change your own life. A year after her passing and almost a year into my transition, I’m finding change to be less difficult to face; an uncharted future no longer fills me with fear as it did just four months earlier. Perhaps, some of the solace I’d prayed so hard for last year found its way to me so now, with the help of my friend who exists in the past tense, I can craft a meaningful work in present tense and share with her some of the credit.
Last year, my friend’s death just before Christmas erased all of the joy that comes with the season. This Christmas, her strength and courage endures to inspire me. I can glance at the snow just beyond the Christmas tree and instead of weeping that she died I will smile because she lived and because she was in my life.
Imagine that. In a broken world, miracles are within the realm of possibility. Just accept what’s hard and push forward, like her, unafraid.
Milaad Majeed (Merry Christmas)
Not that any of us hadn’t anticipated her death. We had, even though whenever we spent time with her or each other we draped ourselves in a childlike hopefulness that denies the reality of terminal illness. We hoped like children who believe Santa Claus can transcend physics in order to drop a toy at the home of every child on earth in one night. We clung to promises offered by repeated FDA-approved treatments or subversive non-FDA-approved programs. We prayed for a miracle – even a simple, garden variety miracle that, in a broken world seemed within the realm of possibility. Yet, her health steadily declined.
Throughout her illness, my prayers for my friend changed. At first, my pleas were for her recovery. Later, after her brief remission lapsed and treatments got more aggressive, I prayed for God to give her strength, and, I prayed He’d give her husband and children strength too. Toward the end I suppose I gave up on the elusive miracle and prayed for solace for all of us, most especially for my friend. Hours before she passed, my friend said two things to me. First, she said, “It’s so hard.” And then she followed with, “I am not afraid.” Her courage was immense.
In the months since my friend’s death, I have traveled a path of transition. It has been a hard road and many times along the way, I have been very afraid. Whenever I’ve needed courage not to abandon the transition that, I hope, will lead me to a more meaningful existence, I’ve recalled the final words of my friend: It’s so hard and I am not afraid. Her words give me solace because, during transition, there is a death-like process that requires you to you leave behind the comforts of what’s easy or familiar to venture to a land perhaps you’ve only glimpsed in your dreams, like heaven. Leaving what you know … changing … it is hard.
The daily miracle of life, of course, is that we get time – time to heal, time to cry, time to ponder change, time to muster courage, time to reflect back on friends who through their life and in their death, helped you change your own life. A year after her passing and almost a year into my transition, I’m finding change to be less difficult to face; an uncharted future no longer fills me with fear as it did just four months earlier. Perhaps, some of the solace I’d prayed so hard for last year found its way to me so now, with the help of my friend who exists in the past tense, I can craft a meaningful work in present tense and share with her some of the credit.
Last year, my friend’s death just before Christmas erased all of the joy that comes with the season. This Christmas, her strength and courage endures to inspire me. I can glance at the snow just beyond the Christmas tree and instead of weeping that she died I will smile because she lived and because she was in my life.
Imagine that. In a broken world, miracles are within the realm of possibility. Just accept what’s hard and push forward, like her, unafraid.
Milaad Majeed (Merry Christmas)
23 December 2007
Thoughts of Christmases past
It is a fact of life in the northern prairie that on some winter days, you leave your shelter at your own peril. Today is one of those days.
Instead of lamenting the conditions beyond the walls of this old house, I transport my thoughts to an ancient land that exists today only for romantics like me: Persia. Indulge me as I share two of this exotic country’s greatest exports: pomegranates and Rumi.
First, the fruit. One of the earliest cultivated fruits, the pomegranate has been traced back as far as 3,000 B.C. Some scholars even suggest that it was a pomegranate, not an apple, that tempted Eve. In their long history, pomegranates have been linked to health, fertility and rebirth and they have figured prominently in many religions. My late grandmother introduced us to pomegranates when we were children and the fruit, for me, will forever link me to her and both of us to Christmas.
The thirteenth century poet and mystic Rumi (Mohammad Jalal al-Din al-Balkhi al-Rumi), saw every form of human love as a mirror of the divine. Thus, even though Rumi emerged from the Islamic tradition, his message of love seems appropriate to share at Christmas. Here is Rumi’s poem “Like This.”
Instead of lamenting the conditions beyond the walls of this old house, I transport my thoughts to an ancient land that exists today only for romantics like me: Persia. Indulge me as I share two of this exotic country’s greatest exports: pomegranates and Rumi.
First, the fruit. One of the earliest cultivated fruits, the pomegranate has been traced back as far as 3,000 B.C. Some scholars even suggest that it was a pomegranate, not an apple, that tempted Eve. In their long history, pomegranates have been linked to health, fertility and rebirth and they have figured prominently in many religions. My late grandmother introduced us to pomegranates when we were children and the fruit, for me, will forever link me to her and both of us to Christmas.
The thirteenth century poet and mystic Rumi (Mohammad Jalal al-Din al-Balkhi al-Rumi), saw every form of human love as a mirror of the divine. Thus, even though Rumi emerged from the Islamic tradition, his message of love seems appropriate to share at Christmas. Here is Rumi’s poem “Like This.”
Like This
If anyone asks you about the huris, show
your face, say: like this!If anyone asks you about the moon, climb up on the roof, say: like this!
If anyone seeks a fairy, let them see your countenance,
If anyone talks about the aroma of musk, untie your hair [and] say: like this!
If anyone asks: "How do the clouds uncover the moon?" untie the front of your robe, knot by knot, say: like this!
If anyone asks: "How did Jesus raise the dead?" kiss me on the lips, say: like this!If anyone asks: What are those killed by love like?" direct him to me, say: like this!
If anyone kindly asks you how tall I am, show him your arched eyebrows, say: like this!
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