Today I want to conjure the spirit of Mr. Rogers so he can sing It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood because it most decidedly is. A breeze, ever so slight, keeps the sun at bay and makes the deck the perfect spot to spend the day. I do have a few errands, but they shouldn’t take more than an hour then it’s back to the deck.
When I was a kid, I walked to school because my father left early every day to go to work. Most families back then only had that one car, the one our fathers drove, so we all walked. My mother didn’t even learn to drive until she was in her late 30’s. The walk wasn’t a long one and in the fall and spring was a pretty walk on sidewalks shaded by towering trees. Rainy days were the worst for walking. I never carried an umbrella so I always got soaked. My shoes got the worst. As I walked, they sometimes bubbled at the seams from all the water.
Changing into play clothes was the very first thing I always did when I got home from school. On rainy days, my mother would hang up my wet skirt, my uniform skirt, as I only had one. She’d let it dry a bit then iron it while it was still damp. My mother always ironed the clothes when they were slightly damp. It was the easiest way to iron out all the creases.
I sometimes watched my mother iron. She used to take the clothes, sprinkle water on them from a bottle of water with a perforated top she used to keep by the ironing board then fold them and put them in a basket to dampen. This was before steam irons so my mother sort of made her own steam with the water.
At my surprise house warming thirty odd years ago, someone gave me a steam iron as a gift. I still have it. I also have a plastic spray bottle, a descendant of my mother’s glass bottle. I used it to spray the creases.
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