Exercise Therapy, only available in the mornings from 8:30 until 12:30, leaves the afternoons open. To keep myself occupied and to try and help out Ruby a little with her Coral Sands motelier chores. I will clumsily attempt to do things such as make the beds and clean out various room refrigerators but my specialty is to press the pillowcases.
When she first asked, I blurted: "I haven't done it since the stroke . . . but I'll try." I didn't have much hope of succeeding. Not only hadn't I done it since THE BRAIN ATTACK but I've never been very good at ironing.
I bellied up to the board, aimed the fan my way, noted that I had a view of the pool from the ironing station in Rube's "Let'er Buck Suite". I warily took hold of the waiting pre-warmed tool (Black & Decker®) and went for it.
I've been ironing almost every day for three weeks. Left alone to my own devices. I am surprising myself. I am getting self assured. Cocky even. Yesterday, as a test of skill, I spent my day off slowly ironing five of MY OWN shirts. One shirt was linen. Two were rayon. As I slowly pressed, I thought. Though always from a different viewpoint, ironing has seemed a marker in my life.
When I was a kid, before I was in kindergarten, I used to follow my mother around while she did chores. My Pop was at work. My brother was at school. She seamlessly ran the house, on a schedule. Tuesdays were ironing day. She would stand at the board set up in our small "dining" room, take the clothes she had washed on Monday, had smoothed and rolled up, slightly damp, and iron all day. Before spray-bottles, it was important not to let clean laundry get completely dry. If needed, an old 7-up bottle, filled with water and fitted with a wide perforated cap, stood by.
I know that it was pre September 1959. I remember she wore (ironed) full skirted pastel house dresses. There was something hypnotic to a toddler in her repetitive sway at the board. The huge, flared, slip filled skirt agitating like the washing machine itself. I recall the vision as it appeared to me, laying on the floor looking up at her ironing. The enveloping, luminescent umbrella-like dress moving back and forth, following a few seconds behind her repetitive twists, the sight and sound of the big softly starched cotton, like a pastel tent in the wind. I remember sadly the day that all ended. My mother thought I was looking up her dress for other reasons not even dreamed of by this fey 4 year old. So it stopped but the ironing went on weekly, until after I was in college.
In college, a lot of my time was spent with the girl I met at 16. We were together for 8 years. In all that time, Gerri must have ironed. But I was young, I ignored that.
After Ger came Michael. A painting painter from New York. In the 5 years together, he never ironed. Clothes came out of drawers wrinkled and splattered with paint. We wore them proudly.
After Michael and my 30th birthday came Dick. Richard was a clothes pony. Hence he always ironed, meticulously, even clothes made out of fabrics I thought could NOT be pressed. He was an artist, both graphically and at the iron. Not only would he do his own wardrobe, he would do mine. He would press the clothes from the famous designers we had found for me at the New York and New Jersey outlets. I looked FABULOUS. I was happy to let him have at it.
At 35, After he left me (for another, well-pressed, guy), I was in extreme pain PLUS I couldn't iron all the clothes I was left in the divorce. I was alone, I was wrinkled, and not just from crying. A collegue at the magazine I worked at took enough pity on me to offer to teach me how to iron the educated way. She made me promise that I never reveal that the high powered New York business woman she now was had once studied Home Economics in COLLEGE. I never did, sorta. We laughed through her serious lessons. I learned the correct way to do a shirt. It goes like this: Collar/yoke/cuffs/sleeves/the rest. DB taught me to do the back of doubled fabric first, the importance of pulling, what needs to be done up-side-down on a cloth. I listened. Sponge-like, I absorbed. I attempted this alone. I still fumbled.
Soon after, my magazine, the black sheep in a family-values type of publishing company, was sold off to the hipper, more experimental French. Almost everyone was fired, including me. Suddenly I knew how dirty laundry felt. Loveless, jobless, seemingly worthless and rumpled.
A few months later my sister-in-law needed me in Seattle for a design consult. She called, I went, I moved there. A few weeks later Ruby was installed permanently in my life. Then, after a few years of single (permanent press) living, the bouquet carrying B entered my life.
Brian was a younger, unfettered bachelor. I was fettered, some would say "styled" stylist/writer/freelancer with all the encumberance that would fit in my Queen Anne backyard bungalow. Everything but an ironer. Eventually I got a real job, Brian got a real car, we got a bigger house, our first Weimaraner, a domestic partnership certificate from city hall. A life together. A new iron. Brian can iron when he wants to but usually chooses to use the dry cleaner. I go right along. I have for 15 years.
Then in October of 2008, Stroke struck. Early this month, after a long, cold, snowy, housebound, ironing free winter, I came here. To Palm Springs, The Stroke Center, The Coral Sands Inn, Ruby, and circuitously back to the ironing board.
Dear Ruby asked and I tried. The first few cases came cautiously easy. Then the Jersey cowboy cases rode in. Ruby rules that ALL pillowcases be pressed. "They just FEEL better". So, for Rube, I struggle, (I may curse, but I keep ironing). Our lovely photographer friend Debra, overlapping my first few days of respite here, came like the cavalry into the room to help me tug, pull and smooth the bunching, creasing, uncooperative fabric decorated with the deceptively grinning cowpokes. Eventually, AND for the last three weeks reappearing, cases calmly get done. I was taught to muddle through. (But for the record, I DON'T LIKE THEM)
In the last three weeks of slow ironing I have had a lot of quiet time to think about my life. I not only considered how lucky I am to be here (in Palm Springs and on this earth), I found that I have had time to gather together what I've learned about this art of ironing from some wise women in my life.
Among these: Ginka (my mom) taught me craft, Donna taught me the economy of technique, Debra taught me that when the going gets rough, diligence (one of the Seven Holy virtues) will eventually smooth things out and Miss Ruby taught me to keep trying, to never ever give up.
All by myself I learned that falling tears, whether wept due to heartbreak or deep appreciation, will iron right out.
- - - David
