In Your Dreams

Most families have a sleepwalking story. My family has a few, including the time my mother removed curtains at two o’clock in the morning and ironed them. In her sleep.

My parents were in the middle of packing up three young children for a big move from Rhode Island to North Carolina, so my mom clearly had a lot on her mind. The funny thing is she never took up sleepwalking again.

I, for one, was not surprised my mother chose ironing as her somnambulant activity, as it seemed to be her favorite and most frequent household chore.

We were lucky enough to have a mom who valued hanging clothes and sheets out on the line to dry, followed by a toasty press on the ironing board. The delicious aroma and texture of freshly pressed laundry defined motherhood for me. It meant I was well cared for and deeply loved. And that my mom was the kind of mother I needed her to be.

For some reason my mother, who worked full-time by the time I was in middle school, always found the time to dry the laundry in the sun and iron it at night. Even in winter.

However I, who always worked part-time and freelanced, could never find the time to commune with the family hamper. I barely managed to stuff the laundry in the machine and distribute it to the correct drawers on a regular basis.

In the summer, I tried to hang the sheets and towels on the line, but we had a black lab who enjoyed pulling it all down. And those times it dried before the dog found it, none of the laundry made it to the ironing board. In fact, I wasn’t even sure where the ironing board was stored.

Then one afternoon, after taking in a fresh pile of sweet sun-dried sheets, I suddenly got the urge to turn on the radio and iron them. I was feeling nostalgic and wanted to remember that crisp smell and feel of my childhood. And even more importantly, I thought it would make me a better mother.

So I poked around the attic until I found the ironing board and the iron.

Before cranking up the dial and strolling down Memory Lane, I had a few other things to finish up first. I was in the kitchen when my five year-old son came charging down the stairs. He was carrying the heavy iron with both hands, the cord wrapped tightly around the handle.

“What is this?!” he exclaimed.

His eyes were practically popping out of his head, thrilled by his discovery.

It was obvious he had never seen one before and he was hoping it was some kind of ancient weapon or a tool that sawed through steel.

“That’s an iron,” I explained, “for pressing sheets and clothes.”

He looked confused. “Why would you do that?”

“So that they won’t have wrinkles.”

He studied my face and said, “What’s wrong with wrinkles?”

“Nothing,” I told him, “except sheets and clothes look better without wrinkles. And also, it just smells really nice and feels good and makes me think of my childhood and Grandma who likes to iron everything.”

He stared at the bottom of the iron. “That’s what this does?”

I smiled, but I wasn’t so sure anymore.

Needless to say, I didn’t iron the sheets that night. Instead I carried the ironing board and cold iron back to the attic.

My son never did sleepwalk, but when he was little he often crawled into bed with his dad and me in the middle of the night.

That night, after my failure to be the kind of mother I wanted to be, my son climbed over my head and snuggled his warm, tiny body against mine under the covers.

I realized this is what defined motherhood for him. And that I was the kind of mother he needed me to be.