Pressing

I step from the sanctuary of my Hyundai and stand on the sidewalk, looking into my parents’ lounge room window.  My mother is sliding a white blouse around a coat hanger that she hooks onto a clothes rack.  It hangs there, cotton carefully crafted to be useful.  She smiles, runs a finger down the blouse’s front, then bends to retrieve another crumpled item.   

When I was five, my mother told me, “I create order from chaos when I iron.”  Then I was still fascinated by the focus she could conjure for a linen jacket, some denim jeans, a cotton skirt.  The way she lovingly eased away their wrinkles as another mother might caress her child’s cheek.  Once I even curled up with the washing, trying to scrunch myself into some attention-worthy fabric. 

Now at thirty, I stride up the path, flanked by evidence that evolution happens.  Even here.  The lemon tree I could hurdle at age six is now over my head and four feet wide with waxy green foliage.  And the garden gnomes have changed.  Doc and Sneezy have been replaced with a kangaroo carved from some sort of gum tree and a stork made from recycled car parts.   

Though I have a key, I hesitate to use it.  Instead I slide it into my pocket and knock lightly.  I watch through the window as my mother frowns, then abandons her position to open the door.  She looks almost disappointed.  It’s just me.  Unaccompanied by balls of laundry.  Still, she draws me in, hugs me momentarily.  Then I am released and she scurries back to her station. 

The air is tinged with lemon freshness.  My mother sprays it from a can.  Tiny orbs of liquid shower a cotton sheet.  The iron hisses and splutters, as though giving my mother a voice she won’t claim for herself.  I stand, waiting for speech, each second strained to its limit. 

From a room beyond the lounge, I hear a moan.  My mother drags her eyes away from the sheet.  Meets mine with an unspoken challenge.  I turn and step towards that sound.   

Hisssss! Pfffft!  The iron wheezes with projected disapproval.  With three more steps I am framed by the painted beige wood that marks the doorway to my parent’s bedroom.   The room is a mish-mash of shadows with a double bed as centerpiece.  Within it, between crisp sheets, beneath a wrinkle-free quilt, is my father.   

Resting, my mother would say.  But he’s not resting.  Every breath is a marathon.  Even simple movements, a sigh, a blink, a swallow, are gargantuan efforts.  So no, my father isn’t resting.  He’s dying.  Cancer.  His final stages.   

I step forward, run the back of my hand lightly down the hollow that was once his cheek.  He strains his lips into a smile.  I fold onto the edge of the bed.  Then kicking off my shoes, I crease the quilt with my body, stroke the skin that sags into furrows my mother can’t iron away.  

--ENDS--