I stand here ironing.
I don’t own an iron. I’m at a hotel with a borrowed ironing board preparing my suitcase-crinkled dress to go out for dinner.
My children have never ironed. Should I teach them? To line up the seams and create a crease down the front of the pants. To press the collar so it folds crisply. To spray the fabric with light mist to steam it and make it stay, the way my nanny showed me.
I used to be paid $.25 per item to do ironing for my mother.
What else are they missing? Do they need this skill? I’m room worried about cyber bullying and YouTube algorithms, and teaching them the dangers of the internet.
These women’s tasks like ironing and replacing a button and darning socks - we’ve been liberated from them with cheap overseas labour and inexpensive replaceable materials. And Lycra in our jeans for which I’m sure every round butt is grateful.
We’re working on simple cooking and baking at home. Learning to read. How to keep one’s room tidy and deal with bathroom grime. Reading, punctuation, and times tables. Keeping one’s hands to oneself, for the youngest. How to choose an AI translator and how do you know if what’s on the internet is true.
We don’t need a lot of it anymore. I’ve gotten by the last ten years without an iron. That’s due to my own aesthetic and fabric technology, but I wonder what else is going to disappear and maybe I’ll need it. Or worse, want it.
What else has quietly disappeared? I loved earning each 25 cents, making a sharp pleat and crisp collar. I loved zoning out and feeling the warm steam, smelling detergent as the fabric was rewarmed. I loved lining up the hangers and hanging each item just so in my closet.
Sometimes I get that satisfaction drying dishes, making sure there isn’t a water spot. Or wiping up the dirt off my baseboards, when I actually get to it. Removing, cleaning, and tidying a messy drawer.
Microsoft Excel just doesn’t satisfy me the same way, no matter how clever a formula I write. Neither does cleaning up my email. It leaves me tired and anxious for what I might have missed in the frenzy for inbox zero. My thumbs get a little workout with Candy Crush but it sucks me in for too long and I’m irritated after.
Simple pleasures in physical tasks. I want my kids to know those feelings. Their lives are on Chromebooks and iPads and Nintendo Switch. They play outside and make things of dirt and sticks. We don’t make or maintain many things when it’s cheaper and easier to buy a new one.
Isn’t this supposed to be liberation from the household? Instead of doing the work I spend my time online making the orders for groceries and Amazon lists. Administration of tasks that were someone’s job once are mine now, booking doctor and dentist appointments in scheduling software. Returning products online. Ordering new cheap pants that I will not need to iron online. Planning my whole life online.
And their lives online. So much time in a screen. These children of anxious love, anxious children.
