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I suffer from an ironing deficiency. My rare attempt to press a crease adds enough pleats to qualify for the International Accordion Championship. I know the patent for the electric iron in 1882 must have seemed revolutionary, but I'd gladly dedicate my laundry room to the man—or, more likely, the woman—responsible for permanent press. Wrinkled shirt? I spritz it with water and toss it into the dryer. Why else did the little squirt bottle come with the iron? Shirt not smooth yet? I dunk it in the tub and give the dryer another go. If the dryer still can't save the shirt, then I've no choice but to relegate it to the ironing pile.
Most families search for warm memories in a scrapbook; my family finds them in the ironing pile. A baby quilt for my now 16-year-old son. Khakis too wrinkled for his third-grade Christmas concert. The flapper costume from my now college-aged daughter's eighth-grade musical. But the antiquity of these relics doesn't mean I neglect this pile. I visit at least once an Olympiad. Each time I pause and smile: My, how quickly children grow up. Then I box some of the skirts, jumpers, and sailor suits and let my sister iron them for her children.
I never planned to advertise my pressing problem. I inadvertently went public early in my marriage when I volunteered to fetch an iron and board for my visiting mother-in-law to use. Forty-five minutes later, as an ironing-pile archeologist emerging from her first dig, I surfaced, gripping a board under one arm, cradling an iron in the other, and dragging a wrinkled oxford shirt twisted in the iron's electrical cord. I managed to rip off the manufacturer's tag with my teeth before I returned to my mother-in-law.
That little incident would explain the gift my daughter received from her grandparents for one of her first Christmases. No plastic iron or toy ironing board for this girl. Hoping she could overcome her upbringing, my in-laws gave her a Kenmore Light 'n' Easy Steam/Dry Iron complete with SilverStone coating. Accompanying it was a dorm-sized ironing board "so she can practice." I find an extra one comes in handy when I need to prop up a window and I've already pressed the family Sunbeam into service as a doorstop.
Despite my mother-in-law's gentle—yet obvious—clues, I never understood how out of the mainstream I was until a recent disagreement with the contractor planning an addition to my house.
"The dryer goes here, the washer here," he indicated as he paced off a new laundry room on a portion of our backyard. "Here will be the stand-up freezer from the garage." He ended by pointing with satisfaction to where he could attach an indoor clothesline.
I shook my head. "You haven't accounted for the ironing pile."
He looked up from pacing, his face blank. "The ironing pile?"
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