Week 46.
I intended to write about something else. But just now, as I started, I remembered this blessing and changed my mind. This week I was especially grateful for the blessing it is to iron David's shirts. After Ethan was born, I started taking David's shirts to the cleaners to have them ironed at $1.25 a shirt. Money well spent, I thought. But with the economy being what it is and Christmas coming and all the rest, I decided I need to be more thrifty, and so a while back I re-started ironing his shirts. Six per week. (He wears a t-shirt on Saturdays and I don't iron those, though my grandmother would.) And it has been a surprisingly delightful task. Quiet, satisfying, and gorgeous hanging in a row. Every time I iron a shirt, I thank my Heavenly Father that David has a good job to wear his shirt to every day. And every time I iron the yoke, I think about all that is resting on David's shoulders and all the burdens and worries he carries for the rest of us. The greatest blessing of my week was ironing and hanging these shirts one by one in David's closet. And the multitude of blessings that row of collars and cuffs imply. Plus I love the smell of starch and steam. Mix it with aftershave and I'm a goner.
I'm including this gorgeous piece of my Grandmother's writing as well because I cannot iron anything without thinking of it:
"[Laundry] done, the next chore was to dampen them down with a shake of dripping fingers, roll them up in little bundles. Cuddled in the clothes basket, they looked like loaves of bread dough set to rise. Here they waited for the next day when the four boat-shaped flat irons were placed on the coal stove, more fuel put on the fire, and each of us girls took our turn at smoothing out wrinkles of an apron, shirt, or dress. When one iron became too cool, it was exchanged for a hot one by releasing the clamp on the curved wooden handle.
"I wonder if my children aren't missing some of the labor, mess, and satisfaction of doing the laundry as it was done in the good old days. The modern ease and convenience of our automated lives has taken something besides the drudgery out of the domestic scene."