HOME AGAIN!

By Joanne Peterson

The Beacon

Ive said before that my mom had every day of her week scheduled. The schedule revolved around the household needs of her family, with pleasant additions of lunches with friends, circle meetings at church and puttering in her flower garden.

She also made daily forays to the grocery store frequently carrying the recipe for that days dinner in her purse, clipped from the newspaper or copied from Bea Donovans cooking show on Channel 5. We knew Moms routine.

Monday was laundry day. Wherever she lived, my mothers preference was to hang laundered clothing, sheets and towels outdoors on a clothesline.

Early on, everyone did that, as no one had a dryer. But even after she acquired a clothes dryer, weather permitting, my mom preferred using the clothesline, claiming the laundry smelled like sunshine. (I was convinced. I still dry laundry outdoors when I can, even if I must drape it on a spindly wooden rack on my deck.)

Before we moved to Edmonds, my recollection is of laundry hanging on three parallel lines across the basement of our little house in Lake City. Probably I only imagine that the clothes that dried in our dark gray basement always smelled vaguely of damp cement. I remember for certain the slap of wet sheets when I blundered on roller skates into those lines of laundry. (After we moved to Edmonds, I had sidewalks for skating, mostly so bumpy and uneven they made my teeth jitter.)

After Moms Monday laundry day, Tuesday predictably was ironing day. My approach to ironing is quite a bit more casual than my mothers. Scheduled? Hardly. I iron when I begin getting lonesome for a particular garment I havent seen lately and reach far into the closet for the white mesh bag holding accumulated ironing.

I see things Ive long forgotten. That would be my cue to iron those items and immediately put them in the Donate box, wouldnt it? I do not. I cannot shake the belief that my clothes enjoy living with me and do not want to go elsewhere. But thats a whole different problem than ironing, isnt it?

Every time I drag out my ironing board, set it up in the bedroom or living room (near the TV) and get out the iron, I think about Mom. With a trigger-handled plastic spray bottle, I carelessly mist water over the skirt or pants as I skid the iron around. (Usually, I get the carpet wet.)

My mother sprinkled the clothing hours before she ironed, using an old vinegar bottle with a perforated stopper jammed into it. She rolled items up into individual bundles to evenly dampen and set up the ironing board in the laundry room or kitchen. (She starched my dads shirts. Imagine!)

After ironing one garment, some dishtowels and several pillowcases I like doing the flat things I tire of ironing and return the still-bulging bag to the closet. Theres no way I could explain that to my mother.