My Mother Ironed Shirts
March 5 2008


My mother ironed shirts
in our quiet basement;
no TV
no music playing.
It must have been cozy down there
all alone;
the ceiling low,
the incandescent glow
of 40 W bulbs.

I doubt she planned the week’s itinerary
or grappled with philosophy
-- solving the great moral dilemmas
that have stumped thinkers forever.
No, I think all she found was peace.
In the hot iron
going to-and-fro, hissing steam.
In wrinkled collars and sleeves,
pressed perfectly flat
in a single pass
of hot shiny steel,
her hand conferring order.
And in a line of precisely ironed shirts
on wire hangars,
obediently shoulder to shoulder.

They were either no-nonsense white
or light blue,
interchangeable under my father’s dark suits,
which he wore every single day
well into his 70’s.
She sent him on his way
like an only child turned-out for school;
respectable,
unostentatious,
well taken care of.

But what if he’d rebelled in his old age
and dumped the formal dress,
wearing, instead, loud Hawaiian shirts,
poly-cotton, permanent press?
Would she have ironed anyway?

The burnt scent
of super-heated cotton.
All the shirts, in reassuring rows.
And the iron, steaming its warmth,
hypnotically back and forth.