Ironing Boards and Metaphors

I read a poem once that described fossils as being bookmarks between pages of stone. That image has stayed with me. However, now I have a mundane housewifey image that marks time passing: ironing board covers are bookmarks between stages of my life.

I bought a new ironing board cover at Bed, Bath, and Beyond. Normally, I just slip the new cover over the existing one(s) so that the padding remains and makes ironing less of a chore. (My mother-in-law always takes off the old covers when she puts on a new one, and ironing at her house feels like nothing is between the iron and the board, sort of like ironing the driveway.) But today, as I attempted to put on the new cover, I realized it wouldn't fit. Grumbling to myself, "This is supposed to fit a standard-size ironing board! Why won't it fit?!!" I tugged and stretched, to no avail.

At last, being the brilliant woman I am (snark), I realized I'd have to take off an old cover or two. I began peeling. The top cover was a dark green with burgundy hearts. It's relatively undamaged, but the Americana theme just doesn't suit me anymore. (The new cover is a pale green, leafy design.) Then below that were THREE other ironing board covers--AND padding! Two were yellow-ish, and one was silver. The very bottom cover has to be the one that my husband and I started our married life with. It was yucky, stained, brown blotches on some kind of field of yellow. I kept the top cover for an ironing board that I plan to put in the basement for my arts and crafts work and (much to my husband's delight and amazement) threw away the others. No sense in pushing my luck.

I confess, I do become sentimentally and emotionally attached to a lot of useless junk. But as intriguing as I find the idea of ironing board covers being bookmarks for stages of my life, I don't like ironing well enough to want to remember my life according to what and when I've ironed, like Tillie Olsen, "I Stand Here Ironing." It's probably because now that I don't sew as much as I used to, I don't iron as much as I used to. Still, when I think of the graduation gowns I've pressed, the wedding and funeral garb I've had to de-wrinkle.... I sit here, thinking of ironing.