The long-ago laundry of the Days of Our Lives

Who can say where such memories come from?

Maybe a random sound. Maybe an errant smell. Maybe some snatch of words in the morning paper.

In any case, this morning I remembered Mom ironing in the kitchen all those years ago, a memory that hadn’t crossed my mind in decades.
Mom used to hang the wash on the double clothesline in the backyard and bring it inside in a big wicker basket bundled to overflowing. She did it even during the winter, when the clothes would freeze-dry in the brisk Chicago wind.

Her washday was always sometime during the week because weekends were too hectic with other activities. Dad would be home from his job in the steel mill, we kids would be home from school, and maybe we would take a drive in the station wagon. Or it was Sunday, with church in the morning and a beef roast with potatoes and carrots to prepare in the early afternoon.

And so, laundry day was always a weekday.

If it was summertime, she would scoot us out the door and tell us not to come back until dinnertime, which was fine with us. We would find lunch on our own: an apple from Jimmy Danz’s tree. Or some grapes from Leslie Kuflik’s vine. Maybe even a bologna sandwich from Larry Fiorentino’s kitchen if it wasn’t laundry day over there.

In the meantime, there was always some mischief to be found in the cinder alley, or we could drum up a ball game by thumping a baseball bat against the sidewalk in a rhythmic song of gathering. By the time we got to the ball field at 76th and Diversey, a block away, enough kids would have gathered for a pickup game. On rainy days, there was plenty of adventure waiting in the musty dirt-floor garage.

And so my memory of Mom ironing in the kitchen must have come on a day when I lingered in the near-death throes of flu or mumps or measles. There was no other reason that I would be inside in the summer or home on a school day.

I would have wandered into the kitchen in search of some ginger ale and saltines — the only meal I would be able to keep down — and I would sit at the kitchen table and watch Mom work as she listened to “The Days of Our Lives” echoing from the T.V. in the next room.

To this day, if I hear organ music and the words “Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives,” my stomach lurches with involuntary spasms.

When I had choked down all the saltines and ginger ale I could stomach, Mom would give me the option: back to bed, or go to work for her there in the kitchen. Maybe to distract my mind from my gastric distress. Or maybe to dispel the notion that staying home from school was ever going to be a vacation.

In any case, it would be my job to pull the clothes from the basket — shirts as stiff as road-flattened cats, slacks that could stand against the wall to patiently wait their turn — and sprinkle them with enough water to get them to relax a bit before ironing.

Mom’s sprinkler was an old green Coke bottle fitted with a cork at the top. The cork had a steel cap that looked like a salt shaker, and when I shook it over the clothes, the bottle would ring with a liquid Tinker Bell tone. Mom would coach me through the first few items — not so much water that they had to be returned to the clothesline, yet enough that the iron would sizzle steam from the shirt to drive the wrinkles away.

When I had gotten it right, I would roll the garment into a tight fist of fabric to hold the moisture until she was ready for it. I would line them up on the edge of the kitchen table, like gridlocked cars waiting for the jam ahead to loosen, and hand the lumps to her as she folded and stacked the neat pressed piles at the other end of the table.

And when I had finished misting and fisting all the clothes and sat with my chin on my hand waiting to hand her another damp ball and yet another, I would watch her work. As her iron hissed onto the fabric, the aroma of the backyard wafted into the kitchen.

If she remembered that I was still sitting at the kitchen table, she gave no sign of it — pressing the iron into the fabric, brushing a strand of hair from her forehead, gazing over my head at the T.V. soap opera in the next room.

During commercials, she would cast her eyes down to watch the iron smooth the shirts and she would sing softly to herself. Maybe one of those squeaky clean novelty songs she might have heard on Don McNeill’s “Breakfast Club” earlier in the morning and couldn’t get out of her head:

“How much is that doggy in the window?
The one with the waggley tail?
How much is that doggy in the window?
I do hope that doggy’s for sale.”

She would keep ironing as she sang, waiting for the commercial to end so she could go back to watching The Days of Someone Else’s Lives.

The Days of Her Life, it seemed to me, were filled with an awful lot of work. Besides the cooking and cleaning and shopping that I saw her do on a daily basis, there was also this that was usually unseen by me — the washing, hanging, gathering, ironing, and folding of our clothes.

And yet — and yet! — she did it all with a song on her lips and a glow of peace on her face.

And it occurred to me that here was a woman who loved her life—hard work, sick kids, and all.

They say that our life flashes before our eyes as we die. We get to watch once again all the Days of Our Lives.

If that is so, I want to linger awhile at that kitchen table, tasting the saltines and ginger ale that settled my stomach. Hearing the tinkle of the watering bottle. Watching the damp fisted fabric relax between my fingers. Smelling the aroma of the backyard steaming into the kitchen.

Feeling my heart warm as my young mother irons and softly sings through the Days of Her Life.

• Author, musician and storyteller TR Kerth is a retired teacher who has lived in Sun City Huntley since 2003. Contact him at trkerth@yahoo.com. Can’t wait for your next visit to Planet Kerth? Then get TR’s book, “Revenge of the Sardines,” available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online book distributors.

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