Ironing

Ironing is a great time for introspection.  Today, while ironing shirts, I thought back to my first mother-in-law.  She was a very accomplished housewife.

When her son, probably an adopted son, married me and subsequently went off to serve his two year stint in the Navy, she welcomed me into their home.

After a year on my own, in a college dormitory, it was the sensible thing to do both economically and advisorly.  Here I was, nineteen years old, pregnant, still working but not making much money, with a husband just out of college and now aboard a guided missile cruiser in the Philadelphia Naval Shipyards.

Looking back, they couldn't have been thrilled to have me.  First of all, in their eyes I was a "yankee."  Now, I knew that I was really a Mid-Westerner, but that wasn't a term with which they were familiar.  North of Red River = Yankee.

And I wasn't very good at ironing.  Looking at the five shirts I just finished, I believe I have improved.  I'm still not great at sewing on buttons, but that's next.  My M-I-L, who was known as "Honey", gave me serious lessons in how to iron a dress shirt.

The other lessons came when we brought our darling baby girl home from Hermann Hospital at five days old.  We had to push to get her out that soon because her Daddy needed to return to the ship.  He carried her from the hospital to the car and from the car to her crib and left for the airport.

My M-I-L's favorite saying, when it came to taking care of sweet girl, was "Now everybody has their own way of doing things.  Here's how we are going to do it."  And we did.  I lost most of the pictures of those first few weeks in the drenching from TS Allison, but I remember them well.

At five weeks old, Laura and I boarded an airplane non-stop to Philadelphia to begin Navy life.

Soon Laura will be a grandmother for the first time.  She has been a spectacular mother for almost thirty years.  She loves babies, and she knows how to take care of them.  Her grandchild's parents have nothing to fear.  It will be a very special time for all of them.  Thank goodness.