A Little Memory of My Dad…& His Iron

Project 365, Day 210/365

Today’s post is brought to you by Charles’ answer to me after bombarding him out of the blue with the following request: QUICK, GIVE ME A RANDOM WORD!

Charles: “Sausalito.”

Me: “What on earth? No.”

Charles: “What? You said to give you a random word. That’s random.”

Me: ……

Charles: “Okay…iron.”

Me: …..

I sat, thought…iron….iron. What on earth can I write about an iron?

First, I thought of the time when I was a little girl, and for whatever reason, there was a hot iron just sitting out in the open. I picked it up, as kids do, and touched the hot steel with the side of my finger. That’s all the lesson I ever needed to be careful around irons. I still have a tiny little scar on my right pointer finger from that.

Speaking of searing skin on a hot iron, there was that time, just before my friend’s wedding years ago, that Charles sizzled his FACE with an iron one morning. I wasn’t there, as we lived in different cities at the time, but he called me promptly after to tell me. And then he sent me a photo, and OH MAN…it was bad. The pictures from my friend’s wedding will forever be an artifact of the time my beloved stupidly burned his face…on an iron.

Then, my mind wandered to my dad. That man ironed every. single. day. When I think of my dad as I grew up, half of my memories are likely him standing behind that ironing board in my parent’s bedroom, ironing his crisp white dress shirt, his gray or black slacks. There was the period when he was very into starching things, so then I got very into starching things. I’d starch the living daylights out of my clothes, almost a competition with myself to make my dress or shirt or what have you stiff as a board.

No memory exists in my mind of my father without a sharp crease down his work pants or a perfectly laid collar or cuffs. For the majority of my life, my dad worked as a pharmaceutical sales rep. I remember him lamenting not having gone to pharmacy school, or even medical school. While the focus of his work was of course sales driven, my dad loved science. His office was always full of medical guides, funny little thermometers with floating mercury droplets to denote the temperature, anatomy charts. Every VHS tape that ended up having a random episode of Saved By the Bell or a very bad TV copy of Home Alone on it always started with a snippet of a doctor talking about something, or some surgery. That was normal fare in our house. We’d record over all that stuff. They were videos he’d get from work, so they were up for grabs after he studied them.

My dad, his perfectly ironed work clothes, and all his random medical stuff.

I remember him teaching me how ironing men’s clothes are a bit different than women’s clothes. My mind remembers watching the tip of the iron glide into the pleats and then flatted them…I learned that the little open ridge at the edge of the iron is so that buttons can easily shimmy between as you iron between them. Danny Hernandez is a man who always starts with his collar, then moves on to his sleeves, then does the body of a shirt. To this day, I still iron button-downs that way.

Somehow, as life would have it, I married a man so similar to my father. Charles is an ironer. Me, not so much. I’ve been known to throw perfectly clean clothes into the dryer during a load just so that I don’t have to iron them. My sister jokes that Charles probably irons his jeans and socks (he does not, by the way). He does jokingly occasionally jab at me that growing up, his mother would iron all the sheets for the house. My sheets? Eh…not sure his mom would approve (j/k she’s not the type to actually care).

I consider myself highly domestic…and highly lazy. I know how to do all the things—iron, sew, hem, cook, clean—I just would rather spend my time doing other things. So thank you, dad, for teaching me how to iron properly…if only I had it in me to use those skills far more than I do. My clothes (and bed) would look way better if I did. But, my muscle memory is always at the ready should anyone hand me wrinkly a blouse or slacks.

See you tomorrow, FOAS.