Ironing Is Terrible

(My wise friends say I should buy a steamer! They might be right! But then what would I have had to write about this week?)

I ironed my son’s graduation robe the other morning. He had to wear it for the senior awards assembly at school. All the seniors put on their gowns and hats and marched in together as the rest of the school and a handful of parents watched. It was a lovely ceremony with many students honored for their years of academic and athletic achievements.

I remember many of my son’s classmates from when I volunteered in their classrooms when they were in elementary school. They all have gotten so smart (and tall!). Many of them are heading off to college to study things like applied physics and environmental engineering and music and global studies (that last one is my son’s).

So all of that was great!

The thing that was not so great?

The ironing of the robe first thing this morning, because I was too tired to do it last night.

I hate ironing.

I hate ironing and my son has never ironed anything in his life, so while I’m sure some would argue that it should be his responsibility to iron his own graduation robe, I decided that this would be a challenge we would tackle another day.

I have read books about people who enjoy ironing. They find it meditative.

This has never been my experience.

I have an iron and an ironing board. I think possibly the last time it was used was when my daughter graduated from high school four years ago and needed her graduation robe ironed. My good mother-in-law was visiting then, so she happily took over the task of ironing the gown, because she is an expert ironer.

My mother-in-law is not able to attend graduation this year, so the ironing fell to me.

It does not help that my son is 6’2”, which means that his gown is larger than many of his friends’ gowns, and therefore has a tremendously unfair amount of fabric to deal with.

(I guess I should worry most about the front of the gown, because the back will naturally get wrinkled when he sits on it. Nobody can expect the back to look good after the ceremony, right?)

This is what always seems to happen when I  iron: I try very hard and get the front of the garment looking ok! Then I turn the thing over to work on the other side and discover I’ve added a whole mess of new wrinkles because I didn’t have the blessed thing smoothed out the right way. So, I try again. And again. Eventually? It just has to be good enough.

Which was what happened with my son’s robe.

I ran out of time, and it looked better. Not perfect, but better.

This is yet another instance where “done” is better than “perfect.” At least it didn’t look like it had been wadded in his backpack, which was how some of his peers’ robes looked at the ceremony.

None of the kids seemed to mind, though.

They just seemed happy to be there, wrinkles and all. It was one of the last times they would all sit together as a class. What did it matter if there were some rumpled gowns?

It didn’t matter. Not one bit.

I left the ironing board out, though. The iron, too. I’ll give the robe a touchup before the official ceremony next Saturday. And then? The board and the iron will go back to where they normally live and will probably stay there until our next major event. A job interview? A wedding?

Ironing is terrible, but if it mostly needs to be done when a celebration is at hand? Then I can be grateful for the fact that I have an iron and an ironing board, and even more, that I have a happy reason to use them. If I look at it that way? Maybe ironing is not so bad after all.