This one's for Darin (who I still think is AMAZING)

After my post yesterday I haven't been able to get ironing out of my head. Yeah, trust me, it's a crummy thing to have stuck in your head.

Anyway, I was thinking about how the last time my sister, Darin, and I were at my brother's house (the house we all grew up in, by the way), we discovered that my brother had installed a fold-out ironing board in the hallway. It's very cool, with an outlet and storage for the iron, plus a task light, all hidden away by this lovely door so you'd never know it was there unless you're nosy like I am and say "Hey, this cupboard didn't use to be here!" so that your sister-in-law will feel obligated to show you.

Anyway, my sister and I were just insanely jealous and immediately called my brother to the scene to find out what it would take to get him to install ironing cupboards at our houses. I'm not sure if other people can have a conversation like that with their brothers and sisters without resorting to umm, childish tactics, but ours quickly unravelled into a who loves who more and who owes who more debate until finally my sister said to me, "Wait! You never iron anyway!"

"Oh. Yeah. That's right. But I WOULD! If I had a beautiful and convenient ironing cabinet like this one."

But I couldn't lie. I probably wouldn't. "FINE. You win!" I had to say.

Anyway, I realized I haven't posted a random memory from my past in quite a while so I'm going to cheat and post something that I wrote a long time ago for a college English class. You'll understand why I chose this one in a bit. I'm guessing I was 21 or 22 when I wrote it...

I remember when she first told me she was moving out. "It’s Grandpa Rose’s house,” she explained. He’d lived there most of his life and raised three sons there. Now he was over ninety years old and his children were moving him into a nursing home and putting his house up for rent. "It’s the two-story Victorian across from Harvey and Ila’s. You must have seen it a million times. It’s white with a little balcony. I’ve always loved it and now I ‘ll get to live there!" I pretended to be enthusiastic, but I was too caught up in my own thoughts to care about some old man’s house.

My big sister is deserting me, I kept thinking. All my life she’d been just a couple bedrooms away. Every week we snuggled up in her bed to watch "Little House on the Prairie,” my brother laughing at us when we cried at the sad parts. She ' d set my hair on hot rollers and let me wear her lip gloss for special occasions and I would tell her about who I had a crush on , and asked her questions I was afraid to ask anyone else. She even bought me my first training bra, assuring me that, "Yes, someday you too will have boobs." On weekends, we’d go to the bookstore together and then lie out in the backyard reading our new books. I hoped I would be just like her when I grew up. Though I was eleven years younger than she was, she never treated me like a little kid. Now she was leaving and I was afraid everything would change between us. How was I going to get by without her?

A couple of days after she moved, she invited me to spend the weekend. "My first house guest!" she said, obviously thrilled to show the place off. "Let me give you the grand tour , " she said enthusiastically and then led me from one end of the house to the other , pointing out all its special attributes , as if she were a real estate agent and I her prospective customer.

"Here in the bedroom we have a lovely antique bed and dresser!" she said with a wide sweep of her hand.

"They’re beautiful, just beautiful!"

"Notice the high ceilings. They give the house such an airy, spacious feeling. Don't you agree?"

"Oh yes, definitely, " I answered, taking an exaggerated deep breath. "Very airy."

"The bathroom is bright and sunny. Notice that the tub has feet."

"It’s lovely. I notice there's no shower…but really, who needs a shower when your bathtub has feet?"

"Exactly. Let’s move on to the kitchen where you'll see that the stove is -- is – "

"Really, really old. Does that thing actually work?" I asked sarcastically.

"Antique. That’s the word I was looking for. And wait 'til you see this, " she said as she pulled open what looked like a long, thin cupboard. "A fold-out ironing board! Folds in and out in under two seconds," she said with more enthusiasm than anyone has ever used when referring to an ironing board.

I couldn’t help but laugh, thinking of all the mornings she'd come flying through the kitchen door, running late for work. She would pull the ironing board out from beside the refrigerator, and lock the folding legs into place with one hand, while she dialed the phone to wake up her boyfriend with the other. She'd stand there in her underwear, ironing her skirt, drinking a glass of chocolate milk, and talking to her boyfriend all at once. And I would be sitting there watching her in adoration, thinking Wow, she’s amazing!

"And now here we are in the breakfast nook."

"Breakfast nook?" I practically gushed, "That’s the most adorable thing I’ve ever heard of. They actually built a little room just to eat breakfast in…and they called it a nook?"

"Well yes, breakfast was the intended purpose, but for right now we’re going to call it the 'laundry nook'"

"What a lovely view!" I cried, pointing out the window to what appeared to be just a huge expanse of dirt and some kind of pitiful structure that might fall down if you blew on it hard enough.

"Oh yes, the backyard. Follow me," she said, leading me outside. "Now at first glance, it doesn’t look like much, but if you imagine a swimming pool there, and a hot tub there…" she offered, pointing in two different directions.

"Yeah, that’s much better. How 'bout a deck right here, and I bet with a few nails and a couple of boards, you could turn that chicken coop into a gorgeous guest house."

"Now you’re getting it. Oh, I almost forgot!" she cried, grabbing my hand and yanking me back up the stairs. Standing on the back porch, she stood pointing to a window. The window to Grandpa Rose’s room. The only room in the house that was off limits, according to her landlord. And locked tightly for storage, it was the room that, of course, held the most mystery. "Look inside," she said, her voice dropping to a whisper, either out of respect or maybe a sense that we were doing something wrong by intruding on the quiet privacy of this room. The window shade was pushed away just far enough so that if you looked closely you could see inside. "Go ahead and look!" she said, more anxiously this time.

I held my breath as I leaned in close to the window, unsure of what I was about to see. I cupped my hands up against the sides of my face to block out the sunlight and as my eyes adjusted, the contents of the room slowly came into view. I glanced around quickly at first and then went over it again a little more slowly.
It looked a lot like the other two bedrooms, except it was overflowing with furniture. The enormous bed in the middle, old and tired from so many years of faithful service, looked as if it would be content to sit there forever surrounded by the other strong, dark pieces. Night table, bookshelf, two chests of drawers, a couple of lamps and an overstuffed chair. But nothing out of the ordinary, as far as I could tell. "Yep, it’s a storage room all right," I said sarcastically, backing away from the window.

"The headboard, look at the headboard!" she practically screeched. And I leaned in again, letting my eyes fall on the sensible, sturdy looking mahogany headboard. It was in good condition except that there were two round spots where the smooth, shiny finish had worn away. "Oh!" I said, finally understanding.

"Head prints. One for him and one for her," my sister said in a tone that I would imitate from then on, every time I gave someone a tour of the house, ending with the head prints.

Since I had never heard anything about Grandpa Rose’s wife, I had created her in my head. I’d imagined an early death for her. Some quiet, horrible disease killing her when she was still young and beautiful, leaving her adoring husband behind to care for three young children. But this headboard conflicted with my story, proving that she had been around a long time, probably long enough to become "Grandma Rose."

I couldn't help but smile as I pictured the cute little gray-haired couple , spending lazy Sunday mornings in bed together, side by side, drinking coffee and reading the paper, one pausing every once in a while to read an interesting passage to the other. "This is a great house," I said, really meaning it.

After the tour she insisted that I take a bubble bath in the old fashioned tub. The perfect hostess, she made sure I had all the necessities: a good book, my favorite radio station, and Dr. Pepper in an elegant wine glass. "And don’t get out until you’re all pruney, okay?" I could hear her in the kitchen arranging her new dishes in the cupboards, singing happily off-key to one of her favorite songs. She’s definitely my sister, I thought, knowing then that everything was going to be okay.

Heredity saw to it that we got the same awful singing voice, the same funny little toes. Time spent together caused a lot of who she is to rub off on me. Same taste in music, same ability to fry the perfect egg, same sense of humor. We’re sisters. Moving across town or even across the country won’t change that. Our lives are wrapped around each other in a very permanent way.

And I think about that every time I iron in my underwear.