Transformations

Franziska Hart: The Last Ironing

Fri, 10/25/2013 - 6:45am

    The mirrored folding doors draw back
    As softly as a stage curtain
    To reveal the rhomboid space
    No larger than a walk-in pantry
    The overhead ballast flickers to life
    With the help of a door jamb switch
    The warm light illuminates
    3 yellow painted walls
    I enter for the last time.

    Above the sink a white enameled sign announces
    "Laundry" in flowing white script
    Straight ahead and lined up
    Are the workhorses of my captain's wardrobe
    Hanging to attention in their laundry room stable
    Cheek by jowl
    Solid, striped and checked
    White, cream and gray
    Peach, pink, and all shades of blue
    An army of dress shirts ready
    To do battle for the 10,000th day in 30 years
    If only I would press them of their wrinkles
    And set them free to serve another day
    For the last time.

    Transformations

    We tell stories.

    We tell stories to make sense of our lives.

    We tell stories to communicate our experience of being alive.

    We tell stories in our own distinct voice. Our own unique rhythm and tonality.

    Transformations is a weekly story-telling column. The stories are written by community members who are my students. Our stories will be about family, love, loss and good times. We hope to make you laugh and cry. Maybe we will convince you to tell your stories.

    — Kathrin Seitz

    “Everyone, when they get quiet, when they become desperately honest with themselves, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. There is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, only to discover what is already there.” — Henry Miller

    Kathrin Seitz teaches Method Writing in Rockport, New York City and Florida. She can be reached at kathrin@kathrinseitz.com.

    The iron ship is readied for departure
    Stoked with fuel and tanked with water
    She begins to hiss with the arriving heat
    A metal clang rings the cast off
    To start our smoothening journey
    She irons over to the collar
    Then across the yoke
    That shoulders the shirt's body and bears the arms
    Then down along each sleeve to the cuffs, she plows
    Leaving knife-edge creases in her wake
    The air begins to feel warm and humid
    A clean and faint smell of ozone reaches my nose
    Pressing onward, my sure hand guides her
    Around buttons and button holes
    Until finally, she and I can go full throttle without a care
    We steam effortlessly over the wide panels of cloth
    Down to the shirt-tail's bitter end
    For the last time.

    Like a magician's cape
    The ironed shirt swings wide
    Offering up its sleeves to slip into
    Sheathing my captain's torso
    With his Doppelgänger, Medicine Man
    For the last time.

    The yoke settles squarely
    To support the long day ahead
    When decision and diagnosis test knowledge
    And delivery of prognosis tests strength and courage
    His integrity and compassion as evident
    As first vowed so many years ago
    Just before the collar folds
    Into its well memorized crease
    A flamboyant necktie is tied
    To assert style and humor
    That distracts from austerity
    For the last time.

    Buttons pushed through button-holes
    Tails tamed by the belted waistband
    Leave only a nerdy Parker pen
    And the pesky pager to be pocketed
    Before he sails out the door with two oranges
    We will meet again, my captain calls farewell
    For the last time.


    Franzika HartFranziska Hart is a resident of Camden. She is currently working on a creative non-fiction piece set in India.