The Mangle

I was at a point today where I was able to start catching up on ironing! (cue choir) Hallelujah! My bedroom closet is big and I always keep the ironing board set up in there, and the ironing basket has been growing and growing. I made a BIG dent in it. I like to iron in my closet. It is quiet and still. I am alone with myself and my thoughts. It's a good time for good pondering. Plus the smell of the steam and the lavendar spray is intoxicating.

I was doing a lot of napkins and tablecloths from all the holidays. The smell made me go back in time to Westchester at my grandmother's house on Truxton.

She had a little guest room built onto the back of their detached garage. It was affectionately called "the back room". It was such a fun place. A darling little cottage room. I can see it perfectly in my mind. In it, she had a mangle set up. It was a rotary ironing system. Very european. I have no idea where or how she got it. But I would love to sit by her for hours and watch her 'mangle'. It was mesmerizing. She would feed the kitchen towels, tablecloths, and certain types of clothing through it. She had 'sprinkled' them with water from a bowl with a vegetable brush and rolled them up and stacked them so they would stay moist. This insured that they would be steamed just perfectly. They didn't have spray bottles back in the 'olden days'. She made sure the creases were just right. And they would come out smooth and just 'so'. You had to be very careful not to get your fingers in/on it. That thing was HOT! The smell of the heat and steam was memory making. Sometimes we just sat there quietly together. Sometimes we talked about any and everything. Sometimes she would explain to me how and what she was doing and why. Other times I just observed by example. Sometimes we would sing together. In the summertime, it could get a little warm in there, but in the wintertime the heat and steam were so comforting. I never got the 'feeling' that this was a chore. Rather that it was a time to sit and relax.

I saw a 'mangle' in the Williams-Sonoma catalog recently. A beautiful updated version of what my grandmother had. I would love to have one! Not just for the perfect ironing, but to make many more memories with.

[I'm so much better today! Mouth a little sore, but otherwise all better.

We decided not to go to the cabin for the long weekend. This will be the first President's weekend we haven't been in Utah in 20 years I think. But we have done so much traveling in the last 6 months and just coming off a trip it feels nice to just stay home. Nats and Robert are going up so they can have a break from college life for a few days, and Shaun is coming home and will fit in some doctor appointments while he's here.

I'm so proud of him. He is doing really well. Winter in Provo is not his 'cup of tea', but things are going good. School is good. He is disciplined with his studies and is doing great in his classes. One of his psych classes is a tough one with some very controversial subject matters. The professor has pulled him aside a couple of times and thanked him for his comments and thinking outside of the 'box'. She told him that a lot of students in this class get stuck in a finite set of ideas religiously and socially and can't see through/past them and his participation gets them thinking! Goodness knows he's been through plenty to be able to offer different perspectives!]