Ironing

Because they are not used very often, I had to pull a few things out of the hall closet to get the clothes iron and ironing board. I couldn't even remember the last time I ironed, but I had just found this beautiful sleeveless cotton dress. It is yellow with red flowers embroidered on it. When the weather is hot this summer, it will be the coolest thing to wear. It is 100 percent cotton, and one of the few things I have that needs to be ironed.

It was still a little damp from drying on the veranda, and still a little damp is the best time to iron. I used to iron his dress shirts. Not because he couldn't, or wouldn't. Not because it was my role in life, my destiny as a woman. I loved to do it. There was a time when we sent them to the cleaners to be done, a time when we were doing well financially and could afford to pay someone else to do it. He said it was something I didn't need to be doing, for after all, I had a lot to do each day. I think my wanting to please him and wanting to serve him made him uncomfortable, because he didn't understand what it did for me. So to please him, his shirts went to the cleaners. I would rather have continued to wash them and iron them, but I did as he asked. It was another way I could please him, or so I hoped.

Sunday afternoon, I stood in our apartment and ironed my dress as the sun came in. It is an especially beautiful dress, a very retro look from the 1960's. The girl in the thrift store said that the designers are now doing a lot of dresses from the 60's. It's so old, it's new again. I remember ladies wearing dresses like that when I was a little girl, when I stood in awe of their fashion and their hair and their makeup, and the way they smelled from their perfume. It's a trapeze dress; that's the technical name for it, but Little Susie thought of it as a triangle dress, because from a point at the neck, it flows down to the knees, going out.

I thought back to the times when I did his shirts. The way they smelled of him when they came out of the hamper. How I would bury my face in them before putting them in the washer. The way I pulled them out of the dryer while still a little damp, and ironed them. No starch, for he didn't like starch. It pleased me to please him, so no starch meant no starch. I am very good at ironing. I can take a dress shirt and make it crisp with no starch at all. I would do the collar and the wrists and the sleeves, and sometimes think wistfully how great cuff links would look. But he didn't like cuff links, so that was okay. I would hang the shirt on the hanger. Don't tell anyone, but if I was alone, sometimes I would put it on, it being big on me, and I would think of being enveloped in his love, nice and big.

He would thank me, for he was very good at showing appreciation for what I did. It was an act of service that I loved to perform, and I think as the months and years went on after we were married and it seemed that so little I did pleased him or made him happy, those little gestures became even more significant for me. I liked looking at him, all put together in his dress shirt and tie and slacks and shiny shoes, and knowing I had helped with that.

As we conversed less, as I felt less comfortable baring my soul to him, as he became less interested in having my body bared to him, it was something I could do to please and to serve, and it pleased me. Washing and ironing his shirts. Sitting on the floor, doing my amateur reflexology on his feet. Like the lunches I would make him. Not just a sandwich, chips and an apple, but homemade soups and salads and the decaffeinated iced tea he loved and things like that which made the other guys at work envious. I know he appreciated it, for he was very good at showing appreciation for what I did for him.

So as I ironed on Sunday, I was ironing this time for me. It is my dress. I made it look very pretty, and it's hanging in the closet waiting for the first warm day I am not at work to wear it. (We can't wear sleeveless things to work.) I thought with a smile that those things I used to do for him, really they were for me. I got more out of ironing the shirts and making the lunches and rubbing his feet than he did out of enjoying it all. Of that I am certain.

So now I am one of the grown-up ladies who wear the beautiful dresses that Little Susie used to look at in wonderment. So now I am figuring out who I am, who I have always been, and how that all looks and feels to me.

You might say that a dress is just a dress, but this dress is more than that. It's so old, it's new again. Just like me.

Susan