Irony-free ironing

I find ironing meditative. Perhaps if I had to do it for a whole family, I might go on strike, but as long as it’s just me and my shirts, it’s excellent rainy day work. The satisfaction of making a smooth surface, a sharp corner, a flat chest pocket, over and over again, is minor, but it’s a satisfaction all the same. I know that lots of people here in the city have somebody else do it, begging off for reasons of not having time. Slippery thing, time. It keeps ticking away and yet we can make our own if we want to.

The cliché has us needing to stop and smell the roses, but I think we need to smell the rotting ginkgo as well, and the garlic and onions cooking, and the steam rising from the iron, and the warmth off the nape of a neck.