The very first week of Nic’s life, I became buried in laundry and have never gotten out since.  No sooner have I emptied one hamper, and another is filled and ready for laundering.  It wouldn’t be so bad except that I never seem to be able to get things out of the dryer as soon as it goes off.  Hours (okay, sometimes days) will pass and now the wrinkles have set in.  There are only so many times you can throw a damp cloth in the dryer and run the air again before the clothes hold together like a rubber-band ball of static.  For me, this is a problem.

You must understand, I am a  person who used to iron her sheets before she had kids.  My co-workers used to laugh at me because I would run home from work and iron my skirt and jacket before meeting everyone for drinks.  Wrinkles were for the untidy.

A few days after Nic was born, I took out the ironing board.  My mom, who was staying with us to help out for a week , offered to iron my husband’s work shirts.  That would be great I said, and when she was done, I would iron the baby’s things.  She gave me a gentle, knowing smile.  “Marie, honey, you don’t have to iron the baby’s things.”  Now, we aren’t talking about a christening outfit or clothes he would be wearing for a professional photo.  No, I wanted to iron Nic’s onsies, his sleepers, his little blankets.

“It’s okay, Mom.  I just want to do it,” I replied in a small, tired voice.

“Really, you can just smooth the clothes out and fold them like this.” she offered folding a onsie as I stared on in horror.

“Mom.” I said, as firmly as someone who has not slept in three days could say.  One look at my sleep-deprived, hormone-crazed, everything-must-be perfect-or-my-baby’s-life-will-be-ruined, you-can’t-tell-me-what-to-do-anymore face and she realized I was going to iron those baby clothes.

By time that Aaron was born, I had given into the idea that I couldn’t possibly iron everything that I laundered. I had a new system.  I would set the oven timer for about 5 minutes before the buzzer on the dryer was set to go off.  When the oven timer went off, I would race to the dryer and start folding things as quickly as I could.  My husband’s work clothes and anything the rest of us would be wearing that other people might see would still be ironed (whether it needed to be or not).  Most everything else could handle the smooth and fold method my mother had so gently to introduce to me.

As the boys grew, so did their messiness and so did the laundry pile.  Only, now, I was so busy chasing them around that I couldn’t keep up with the buzzer on the dryer.  The clothes would sit.  The wrinkles would set.  Each night the ironing would begin.  My husband would shake his head at me.  “Your exhausted,” he would say,”why are you ironing?”

He was right, I was exhausted.  I needed to rest, but I couldn’t.  Some where in my brain, deep in that part that holds our magical thinking, I was sure that if my children, my family, were always in wrinkle-free clothes that everything would be okay.  I was wrong, of course.

Over the next few years, in our perfectly ironed clothes, we would go to countless doctors and therapists and specialists.  We would deal with our sons’ medical and learning issues as they came along.  We would fight with the school, we would explain to our families, we would educate doctors.  All while wearing, every last one of us, our perfectly ironed clothes.

With so many other things to deal, and to enjoy, I have made some peace with the laundry.  Today, anything that no one else will see, doesn’t get ironed.  If it will be just as wrinkled when you get out of the car as it is when I take it out of the dryer, it doesn’t get ironed.

I still can’t help myself, though.  If the laundry has sat for more than a day, I still need to iron the shirts, the pants, the shorts.  The pile is still there but now I deal with it when I can.  If there is any left in the end, they can bury it with me.