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Hello. I’m going to tell you a story about an ironing board.
Strange opener, I know, but stay with me here.
Strange opener, I know, but stay with me here.
After my mam died in 2016, my two brothers, two sisters and I cleared out her house. Anything that could be of use was given a new life with one of us.
Our ironing board had just broken so I got my mam’s old one. The same one I had ironed on as a teenager when still living at home.
At home! What a phrase that is. It’s not where you currently live, it’s the place in your memory where you felt the most safe and loved. But I digress.
My mam’s ironing board was a pleasure to use. It was thick and plush and like ironing in an armchair.
It’s served us well for four years but like all things must, it has come to the end of its usefulness.
Our new ironing board arrived from amazon this morning so I set about taking the cover off the old one ready to give the frame to the local scrap man.
It turns out it wasn’t just one cover. This was the reason why it was so thick and plush - every time my mam had replaced the cover, she’d just put it on top of the old one.
As I peeled away the layers revealing cover after cover, it also peeled away layers of hazy memory like a game of pass the parcel, one after another, as the recognition of the patterns on the covers kicked in.
One by one, I was, in my mind, suddenly in another time and place. And another. And another. Different stages of life that lead to other memories, some happy, some sad.
I don’t think I’ve ever had a moment like that before in my life. It was both gloriously happy and heart-wrenchingly sad at the same time. But I’m glad I had that moment.
So ends my tale of the ironing board.
