My mother ironed our family’s clothes for years. I remember the ironing board being set up in the laundry room, and shirts hanging there waiting to be ironed.
All these years later, I haven’t “had” to wear neatly pressed clothes in maybe fifteen years; I’ve gotten by with gently frumpy a lot of the time.
Now and again I do iron my shirts, and if it’s not a 30 second deal in the morning before work, it’s instead an evening ritual that goes from mundane to meditative, if I’m lucky.
My mind wanders, considers, settles. Other things recede. Maybe I have the classical radio station on in the background, lulling me further to relax.
I do my best to make the most of the fifteen to thirty minutes it takes for the work to be completed. And I enjoy the wrinkles disappearing under the press. The wrinkles melt away, as do my worries big and small. The mundane becomes the meditative.
G, G, GOOD.