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My mom tells me this harrowing story about the time she got her arm caught in the wringer washer at her grandmother’s house in the late ’50s, when she was a little girl. Up to her elbow in that washer, she hollered for help until her grandmother, who was outside pinning clothes to the line, came running and popped the release lever. That would’ve been it for me, but my mom, who was 8, went right back to it, feeding the clothes through the wringer to squeeze out the water.

She didn’t think of it as a chore, just something that needed doing, like sweeping the front porch or bringing in wood for the stove. She loved helping her grandmother, even then loved staying busy, but what she really wanted to do, the thing she begged most to do, was iron.

She was 9 when her grandmother agreed, starting first with doilies and aprons, then pillowcases. There was no ironing board. They used the kitchen table, clearing space among the canning jars. Her grandmother showed her how to spread the cloth flat, how to dip her fingers into a shallow pan of water and flick droplets across the fabric. The pillowcases were made from Julian Milling Company feed sacks, printed with tiny flowers, violets and daisies, and my mother thought they were beautiful.

Later, as a teenager, she ironed for the neighbors. Twenty-five cents per piece — blouses, work shirts, anything with a collar. She spent weekends doing it, moving the iron in a rhythm as natural as breathing.

When she married my dad, she ironed all his clothes, his button-downs and slacks, and although he would’ve been fine having them dry-cleaned, my mom wouldn’t have it. He bought her a brand-new Harvest Gold ironing board, set it up in the spare room and added a table for her sewing machine, and in between changing my diapers and making supper, she would stand and iron. Never once calling it a burden or a chore, it was just what needed to be done — and she did it.

She doesn’t iron much now; there’s no need. She wears what’s comfortable, what doesn’t need pressing. But when she does plug in the iron, maybe for a blouse to wear to dinner, she still uses the same Black & Decker Quick’N Easy from my high school years, its once-white handle now yellowed, the labels rubbed off, the soleplate burnished to a dull shine.

The model’s long been discontinued, a relic from a time when you bought something once and kept it forever. My mother sees no reason to replace it, not when this one has worked so well, for so long, lasting through a lifetime of shirts and pillowcases, seams and sleeves. Decades spent smoothing out the wrinkles.

I don’t have children, so I don’t know what it’s like to patch a skinned knee, to stir a pot while someone tugs at your sleeve, or to iron a child’s clothes late at night so they’ll wake up to something neat, something comforting, something done for them before they even knew they needed it.

But I do know what it’s like to grow up in the presence of someone who folded the towels and swept the crumbs and stirred the gravy and tied the shoes and wiped the counters and ran the errands and never once called it a sacrifice — never called it anything at all — just did it. Because that’s what you do when you love someone. I know what it’s like to grow up with the scent of warm cotton in the air and the feeling that someone, somewhere in the house, somewhere in your life, was always taking care of you.

Elizabeth Hudson
Editor in Chief