The Art of Ironing

I have this memory of lying on the floor near or even part way under the ironing board on afternoons when my mom was ironing.  She was watching Guiding Light, and I was playing with my Pepper dolls.  The air was filled with the scent of clean, hot cotton, and although the TV was on, I mostly remember the thump of the iron on the ironing board and the hiss of the water from the sprinkler bottle dissolving into steam as it hit the surface of my mom's trusty iron.  Occasionally, a freshly ironed sleeve would brush against my cheek as my mom shifted the shirt she was working on.  We didn't talk, at least not that I remember, but it was calm and peaceful there under the ironing board.  With a family of six, in the days when permanent press fabrics were just beginning to hit the market, my mom had a lot of ironing to do.  I remember she used to keep a plastic bag full of damp clothes in the bottom of our fridge between washing days and ironing days, and I loved watching as piece by piece that mound of crinkled up cotton was transformed.  After an hour or two, there were pants and shirts with sharp creases hanging on door knobs and neat stacks of crisp pillowcases, handkerchiefs, and napkins on the couch.  Although my mom probably had a hundred things to do when she finished, she never seemed to be in a hurry when she ironed.  As with so many things, she took her time and did it right.  I think about that as I hurry through my days, running an iron over the skirt I'm about to put on, quickly pressing away the worst of the wrinkles.  During the years raising three kids and working full time, I got into the habit of rushing through housekeeping chores, giving them "a lick and promise, " as my mom would say.  As a matter of fact, it wasn't just housekeeping chores that I hurried through, I got into the habit of rushing through life.  I doubt I will ever have the patience or desire to become an expert in the art of ironing like my mom is, but I would like to start living more deliberately.  I want to take my time and do things right.  I want calm and peaceful afternoons even in the midst of a busy life.

Growing Up

Seventeen years ago we were in Florida for spring break, and our youngest child was about to turn four.  But instead of getting ready for a sunny Florida birthday, we found ourselves in the midst of an emotional storm. The problem? Em didn't want to celebrate her birthday. She didn't want a cake, she didn't want presents, and most of all, she didn't want to be four.  One of the books she liked at the time was I Like to Be Little by Charlotte Zolotow, which begins,

"Once there was a little girl.
"What do you want to be when you grow up? her mother asked.
"I just want to stay little right now," she said.
"Why?" said her mother. "It's nice to be grown up. Why do you want to be little?"
"Because I am," said the little girl, "and because when you are little you can do things you can't when you grow up."

In the rest of the book the little girl describes things she can do because she's little that grown-ups don't do (skipping when she's glad, making a house under the dining room table, going barefoot in summertime, eating snow when it first falls). Em had taken all that to heart and had decided she didn't want to get any older.  Another one of her favorite books at the time was The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister, and what finally calmed the storm and eased Em through the transition from three to four was the promise of a rainbow fish birthday cake. Before long she discovered being older meant she could do more tricks on the playground and keep up better with her brothers, and she sailed through the rest of being four, and five, and six . . . and really all the way through being nineteen. Last year around this time, there were echoes of that long ago birthday. Whenever I started to mention her upcoming birthday, she stopped me and said, "I don't want to talk about it."  Once again she was struggling with getting older; she wasn't one bit excited about turning twenty and leaving her teen years behind.  There were no tears or tantrums this time, but there was a bit of sadness in her eyes as her birthday approached.  So now here we are on the eve of her twenty-first birthday; tomorrow my daughter will officially be an adult, a grown-up. I don't really know how she's feeling about it; she's been through a tough week, so her mind has been on other things. But I've been watching her over the past year, and I can see that she's ready. What the little girl in the book didn't yet know is that there are a lot of great things waiting for you when you grow up that you can't do when you're little. And I think that even though Em liked being little, she's going to love being grown up.  Happy 21st birthday, Em!

Advice from Alcatraz

In one of my classes, we're reading Al Capone Does My Shirts by Gennifer Choldenko right now.  The story takes place in 1935 on Alcatraz Island, where Matthew "Moose" Flanagan and his family have recently moved.  Moose's dad has taken a job at the prison, so Moose's sister can attend a special school in nearby San Francisco.  Moose is unhappy about the move and wants to return to his old life in Santa Monica.  Early in the book he is talking to his dad about it and says, "I want to know for certain this is going to work out." Mr. Flanagan's response has been echoing in my head all weekend.  This is what he tells his son: "Nobody knows how things will turn out, that’s why they go ahead and play the game, Moose. You give it your all and sometimes amazing things happen, but it’s hardly ever what you expect.” One thing I've learned in my twenty-six years of parenting is how very true that is. Each one of my kids is different from the other two; what I learned in parenting one of them has helped very little in parenting the other two.  Their paths through life have been as different as they are, even though they came from the same gene pool, grew up in the same house and the same town, and two of them even went to the same college.  In each of their lives, amazing things have happened, but just like Mr. Flanagan said, it has hardly ever been what I was expecting.  This unpredictability keeps you humble as a parent; it also keeps you on your knees if you're a praying person.  You give life your all and encourage your kids to do the same, then you hold on tight, keep your eyes wide open, and wait to see how it all turns out.