Thursday July 29th
Piles of ironing sit on the ironing board in the garage turned boot room. I save it for days until I can listen to a podcast or join an online seminar about some interesting topic, but this morning the pile seems a lot larger than usual. One could ask why I still iron anything, certainly my daughters think I am insane. I did try and teach them to iron as children but to no avail. My tiny fierce grandmother never let me go anywhere until I had the starch, made from potatoes, on the stove, let it cool, and then dropped all the napkins, pillowcases, shirt collars in it and anything else that she deemed necessary for perfect ironing. If the finished product wasn’t perfect it was thrown in the copper pan full of water and I was made to start again.
Now amused, I sort through the pillowcases and napkins and wonder where to start. What is it about ironed cloth napkins that makes a meal seem so elegant? I used to have someone who ironed all the napkins and while appreciative of her work never really thought about the time and effort it took to keep them pristine. I have so many of them, gathered through the years, that the Covid habit developed of giving John, Caz and myself each a different pattern, the same color of course, but identifiable design differences, so we could each use the same napkin for a few meals. I tried different napkin rings but either John couldn’t tell the difference between them as he set the table or we just forgot who had what design. This is all making me laugh as I describe trying not using more than one napkin every few days as we did when children. I am happy to wash and iron a handful of napkins each week but piles of them might be pushing my good nature.
