It’s shaped like other irons, but                                                                                                                                         there all comparisons end.                                                                                                                                              Heavy steel, encased in chrome,                                                                                                                                                                                like a ’53 Buick or our navy-blue Caddy                                                                                                                             with the white leather seats.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               It’s authoritative – requires                                                                                                                                                        a sure hand and perfect attention.
No pushing, pulling, or sudden jerks.                                                                                                                                  You must drive Mother’s iron as if                                                                                                                                    your life depended on it.

If you practiced (a 1000 Saturday mornings)                                                                                                                   and learned the rhythm of touch,                                                                                                                                   and speed, and turning,                                                                                                                                                    your precision would be rewarded with                                                                                                                          the crispest linens, smoothest satins,                                                                                                                                and creases that could slice bread.                                                                                                                                    
I was only 10 when it all began –                                                                                                                                  when I knew my work had to be perfect.

I managed Mother’s expectations as best I could, but                                                                                                            slowly our town, our world, began to change.                                                                                                                       Sharp pleats gave way to polyester, and
the clean hay smell of linen succumbed to                                                                                                                  linoleum-scented Wash and Wear.                                                                                                                                
It was about that time that Mum painted over                                                                                                                the knotty pine walls Dad had planed by hand,                                                                                                         encasing us all in Cool Aquamarine latex.

Before long, it seemed that everything was synthetic  
and Mother’s iron became harder to handle.                                                                                                                            If you weren’t careful, or rushed to make your ride to                                                                                                                          a one o’clock movie or a football game,                                                                                                                           the power, intensity, and weight of the burning steel                                                                                               would melt silk blouses into gluey clumps,                                                                                                                   and turn summer dresses into parchment paper,                                                                                                  leaving crazy brown sunflowers where daisies used to be.                                                                                                  

But the iron wasn’t traded in or tossed away –  
it wasn’t part of the Great Planned Obsolescence.                                                                                                          Of course by then I didn’t care about any of it.                                                                                                                                                I was a teenager,
overwhelmed with self loathing                                                                                                           and a dull ache you could call lust.  

While the days wore on like a sentence to me,                                                                                                                           there were milestones, markers, on our journey                                                                                                           to this upwardly mobile American Middle Class.                                                                                                                                                Friends and relatives stopped coming,  
and Mums’s fancy aprons were the next to go.                                                                                                             Back then, she had dozens of them –                                                                                                                           one for every holiday or function.
But gin and jealousy ruined most of our parties,
and Mother’s iron became dangerous,                                                                                                                                      as Time and Memory seemed to flatten out                                                                                                                       and accelerate without us.

Our Cool Aquamarine home gradually went dark,                                                                                                           and we observed the new automation as if at a picture show.                                                                                        But the motion was all herky-jerky,                                                                                                                                      and our brains began to stick, and                                                                                                                                      our bodies began to burn,                                                                                                                                                         as we fell shrink-wrapped onto the neon-lit stage,                                                                                                                        half human, half machine, still smelling
of Mother’s household helpers.