I Stand Here Ironing (Rebel Girl)

.I STAND HERE IRONING the clothes that we will wear to the funeral of my husband's aunt, scheduled for later this morning. The living room where I stand smells like the living rooms of my childhood, the steamy ones that my mother upholstered with pressed clothing, hanging the coat-hangered items wherever she could while she smoked and sprayed spray starch and drank vodka gimlets and watched television. My job was to distribute the clothing to the proper closets, mostly the closets of my stepfathers. Wire hangers, pressed shirts, sliding closet doors that often went off track and had to be jammed back in line. In 1968, in the aftermath of Robert Kennedy's assassination, my mother ironed for days while she watched the television coverage of his death in Los Angeles and the transport of his body to New York City, then the slow progress funeral train carrying his body to Washington. She chain smoked and drank and by the time they planted him in Arlington late in the evening she was drunk even though she never voted for him. She was a Goldwater girl.

.I stand here ironing and my five year old son walks by and points to the iron and asks, "What is that?" – which is what he asked a year ago when I ironed the clothes for his grandmother's funeral, which is probably the last time the iron has been used. We are wearing, I note, many of the same items we wore then. I use the kitchen table, covered with a terrycloth towel, as my ironing board.

.I stand here ironing and my husband is one floor below making the final changes to the eulogy he will deliver today. He has become, in recent years, the officiant at family functions, an odd development considering years of estrangement in the family, not so odd considering his humor and eloquence, the slow recognition and appreciation of him that I have seen grow through the years.

.I stand here ironing and wish that I had arranged to pick up the clothes of my father-in-law and press them too. We will pick him up on our way to the services as we did a couple months ago on our way to the wedding of the now-dead aunt's grandson. I was pleased then that I remembered to bring a lint brush in order to touch up my father-in-law's clothes. Today I will forget the lint brush and I will note the wrinkled white shirt he has chosen to wear with a sense of shame. We will see many of the same people today that we saw at the wedding and I expect many of them, the men especially, will be wearing what they wore then. My father-in-law recently marked the anniversary of his wife's death. It's been slightly over a year since he became what his brother now is, a widower.

.I stand here ironing and feel the heat build outside even though it is still morning. It will be a hot day with the rest of the week growing even hotter. At my mother-in-law's funeral last June, the now dead aunt's youngest grandson fainted in the heat. The Spanish speaking gravediggers waited a respectful distance away while her sister and mother said good-byes in German. This time there will be no hole in the ground, no interrupted roots fringing the edges. The aunt opted for cremation, eschewed religion and chose Ike and Tina Turner's version of "Proud Mary" for us to ponder. I predict there will be ribs and turkey, fish and variety of cold salads heavily dressed in mayo. The bar will be well-stocked. There will be vodka and whiskey and tequila. Beer in the cooler. People of a certain age will smoke one cigarette after another, drink more than they should. I will remember that the dead aunt had a laugh not unlike my mother's, roughened by years of smoke and drink, of shouting to be heard above one noise or another, the children, the husband, the car, the world at large. They both ironed standing up, in living rooms and kitchens, pressing the wrinkles out, making the fabric crisp until next time.

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.Summer has been like that scene (written the first week of July), leavened with subplots of dental woes and trout. Rebel Girl thanks Chunk especially and Mona Lisa Quesadilla for their kind attention to this blog. She plans to file irregular dispatches from up north when she can. She hits the road tomorrow morning before dawn.