I was born into a family of ironers. (Yes, “ironers” is now a word., thank you very much.)

My mom is a firm believer in ironing. She ironed my dresses. She ironed our denim skirts. She ironed our cloth napkins. She, of course, ironed my dad and brother’s shirts and pants. Sometimes she ironed jeans–if the hem wasn’t quite right or there were creases in them. She ironed… well, everything.

Okay, well, she didn’t iron underwear. Don’t laugh. I’ve heard some people really do.

But she always said the one thing she wouldn’t iron was her sheets and pillowcases. Because that’s just, you know, SILLY. She said she just wouldn’t do it…

…like her mother did.

My Grammie is Southern to the core. She irons her sheets. In fact, in her Alabama house, washing sheets and remaking the beds is an all. day. affair.

She takes the sheets off. She washes them just so, laying them over the back of the couch, or over the chair in her breakfast nook when they come out of the dryer, sweet smelling and warm. Then she irons them. All five zillion square feet to cover that California King.

She carefully carries them down the long hall into the bedroom before painstakingly spreading those crisp sheets across the bed. Perfect hospital corners. Perfectly even sides. She’ll run her petite hands over and across those sheets fifty times to ensure there wasn’t a wrinkle or ripple in sight.

(And here is where her dear sweet daughter–my mom–loves to tease her mama by frantically batting at the sheets in a mock attempt at smoothing them. Which, you know, only makes it worse. And Gram says quietly, “Missy. Missy!” And they smile a funny, smirky little smile.)

At the end of it all, she pulls up the bedspread evenly and without wrinkles, and places each of the twenty-five fancy pillows in its very specific and–you guessed it–evenly spaced spot at the head of bed. I say head of the bed, but when they’re all placed correctly, they extend a third of the way down the length of it.

And then there’s me.

I wash my sheets. I pull them out of the dryer. It takes me two minutes to put them on the bed–although I DO know how to fold a pretty corner. Pull up the quilt, place the pillows–only eight on my bed. And I’m done. There’s no way I’m ironing sheets or pillow cases that are just going to get wrinkled as soon as they’re slept in.

My mom used to say the same thing.

But a few years ago, I caught her ironing the pillow cases. She says she likes the way they feel when they’re crisp and clean. I say, hey, that’s great, but the second night they’ll be normal again.

(And here is where my Grammie always smiles and says, “But. But, Peanut. Tell me: which bed would you rather crawl into at night?” And I say, “Yeah, well…”)

Today I’m working on an ironing heap the size of Mt. Everest. It seems I’m ALWAYS working on a huge ironing pile. People have told me I’m a bit obsessive about the pressing my clothes thing. The truth is I’m just following my good heritage.

Until I remember the sheets thing. In that case, I consider myself doomed.

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...