"Put your napkin in your lap-kin.”
I have whispered these words to a generation of children at my dinner tables. Still, when I gathered the linens after Sunday dinner last night, about half of them are left unused and folded on the table.
Years ago my mother mentioned once that her mother had always set the table for dinner. This was not the era of microwaves and mac-n-cheese. Dinner was always a project. There were no buttons to spark the flame on the black cast iron cook stove. The fire had to be started early enough to get a good conductive heat. Water had to be pumped at the sink. And because the family was large, and there were ranch hands, and regular hobos welcomed in off the street, there were always extra plates set at my grandmother’s table. You’d think if there were any way to simplify my grandmother would have taken it. But instead, Mom said, her job as a girl was to lay out the tablecloth and set the napkins at each seat. Soft, ironed, cotton napkins. I have, as far as I can remember, always had a yearning to know this grandmother who died long before I was born. So, I decided right then, as my mom was relating this to me, that I would use cloth napkins as an homage to my grandmother. I’ve stuck with it, and it is true, I think of her every time I set the table.
This morning I decided to set up the ironing board and finally iron the napkins we had used at our holiday dinners. They have sat in a patient stack on a chair in my closet for months, waiting to be pressed. Today was the day. I poured some water into my trusty Rowenta iron and set it to high. The napkins we use in our everyday dinners are a blend of polyester and cotton. I have a hundred of them. Literally. One set is white and one is a harvest gold. I pull them out of the dryer while they are still hot and they fold up nicely without any ironing. But I have a few dozen special napkins that are all cotton, or all linen, and they require heat and pressure to make them presentable. One set is a pure white Damask that came from Dave’s grandmother’s cottage on Mackinac Island. Grandma Roy was a remarkable woman. She was a delicious blend of candor and refinement; down to earth but comfortable in grand settings. The cottage on the West Bluff of the island, had a dining table that seated 36. That’s a lot of linens. There were thirteen bedrooms, and I am not sure how many beds because the one in the highest attic space had a number of single brass beds that the grandkid cousins slept in on their summer vacations. The first time I visited the island when Grandma Roy was there, she was up in the servants quarters feeding freshly washed sheets into the Ironrite, a large pair of rolling arms that was perfect for pressing sheets. Crawling into bed at the cottage was always yummy. Few people these days know how it feels to crawl between ironed sheets. Grandma was not one to require someone else to do a job she could do herself.
When it came time for Grandma and Grandpa to ease out of so much work, they sold the cottage on the island and spent their summers, instead, at their sweet little cottage on the shores of Lake Huron, in Tawas MI. The last time we visited the large cottage on Mackinac Island, Grandma opened a drawer in her linen cupboard and asked if I would like anything. I chose a long white tablecloth and the matching napkins. Now, though I know it will require considerable effort to wash and iron out everything after they are used, I bring them out for special dinners. Those poor napkins have sat sometimes years in a stack before I get around to ironing them, which is usually right about the same time as I am setting the table for a special dinner.
Today I decided to address the pile and have them all ready when I need them. For 90 minutes I thought about my grandmothers, the women who came before us, and what life required of them. I wondered what their dreams might have been. What would they have done with their time if they had had a kitchen sink with hot running water, or a stove that heated on demand, or polyester to blend into their fabrics so they wouldn’t wrinkle? I have to fight the weighty sadness I feel when I imagine living their lives. There’s probably too much logic in my imagining. I do not know the private corners where they might have kept their joy.
I used to have a heavy old iron that was once used by someone long ago. I kept it on the floor by the door to the garage. We would slide it over to hold the door open when we were carrying in groceries, or needed a little cross breeze in the kitchen. This was the kind of iron our grandmothers would have used. Heavy iron that sat for a long time on the hot cookstove, absorbing that immense heat. My mom had a sprinkle bottle she used to fill with water, which she sprinkled on fabric before she applied the weight and the heat. The dampness made the fibers more responsive. Now, I press a button on my electric iron and out comes steam from the very bed of the iron. What my iron does not have is the weight of that old iron on my entry way floor. I have to press myself into it, pushing my own weight into it, my head dripping from the effort and the steam. Don’t wash and curl your hair before you iron. You’ll have to re-do it when you’re done (This is experience speaking).
I’m pondering, at this moment, the fact that that old heavy iron is not used any longer to press napkins. It is used, instead, to hold the door open. I think of my grandmothers and wonder, if they had been given the privilege of not having to iron, what might have come through their doors.
