the joy of ironing

Alas, it has happened. I have begun ironing.

It happened suddenly, out of the blue, caught me completely off-guard. It was a combination of seeing SAHM neighbor/southern Italian mamma/friend quickly fold all my laundry on a play date one day this past May, along with a newly renovated and spacious downstairs bathroom with our washer and dryer in one convenient place...

I couldn't help it. I had visions. A long work table. A mini-closet to hang up shirts that are still a little moist. The iron always out on this table.

Now I'm hooked. I can't stand putting clothes away without giving them a quick swish with the iron. I get annoyed when hubby does the laundry (cuz he is still adamantly anti-iron), because they get put away all wrinkly.

I iron underwear. T-shirts. Bibs. Sheets. Jogging pants. Pyjamas.

And I find it calming, therapeutic. It gives me a sense of peace, when everything around me screams chaos. Incredibly, I feel like I have gained an insight into the minds and souls of millenia of mothers who have wasted - or so I thought - countless hours trying to straighten clothes for the sake of some beholder who actually gives a s**t about what our clothes look like.

And you know what the secret is?

It is the joy of seeing a wrong righted. Taking the ugly and chaos of wrinkles, and making them beautiful and orderly. Something all mothers want so desperately to do with our homes, our children, our marriages: take that one little temper tantrum, that one little refusal to eat vegetables, that one little spilled glass of water, one little misunderstanding with hubby, and with a powerful swish of our hand, make it all go away.

Once I was blind. But now I see.