Things My Grandmothers Taught Me; 'Granny Maxims' for Growing Girls
by Julia Sneden
“You mean you still iron?”
There were chuckles and gasps of horror from the small group of
women.
“I haven’t ironed in twenty years,” said
Meg.
Margaret just shook her head. “It’s
more like 40 years for me,” she said.
“Well,” said Anna Claire, who at
40 was the baby of the group, “I’ve never even owned an iron.”
There have been many times in my
life when I felt out of touch with the modern world. Living through
the teenage years of three children left me feeling positively antediluvian.
Having to learn, unlearn and relearn four or five different computer
systems during the past 20 years hasn’t done much for my self-esteem,
either, especially when my kids get it all so swiftly. But ironing?
It never occurred to me that ironing was evidence of being out of
step with modern times. Apparently the rest of the world sends cotton
shirts out to the laundry, these days. Not this old-fashioned (not
to say retrograde) woman.
Not only do I iron; I actually enjoy
it. Handling the clean clothes, smoothing them on the board, gliding
the hot iron as the steam hisses up around it, seeing the pristine,
unwrinkled surface one has brought into being, is for me a sensual
pleasure. I like the smell of the warm fabric. I like the appearance
of the finished product. I like the muffled “clunk” of a well-placed
iron. I like the tactile involvement of the smooth strokes. I like
the fact that I can iron and listen to music or a news program at
the same time. I like the fact that while I’m ironing, I can stand
still. (Mind you, I like it best when I don’t have to do it more
than once in awhile. If I had to do it every week, as we did in
the old days, I might be less enthusiastic).
My grandmothers taught me how to
iron. In our multi-generation household, my parents or occasional
hired helpers did the physically challenging work like gardening,
vacuuming, window washing, carpentry, cooking, and laundry. My grandmothers
and great aunt did less active things like polishing silver, ironing,
setting the table, dusting, and drying the dishes. (Guess who washed
the dishes as soon as she was tall enough to reach the sink.)
Ironing was a joint effort. The two
grandmothers took turns, one each washday, while my great aunt read
aloud to them. I would hang out nearby, just to hear my Aunt Martha
read, usually from The Saturday Evening Post or The Atlantic
Monthly. She could have read the telephone book, and I’d have
listened. Her voice was light and gentle, and her diction precise
without being fussy. Listening to her put me into a kind of trance,
and at times my skin would actually tingle.
Our ironing board was affixed to
the wall behind a tall, narrow, white door. When the door opened
and the board came down, there was another, tiny board behind it
which could also be unfolded as needed for small items. My mind’s
eye still sees my grandmothers pressing the little puffed sleeves
of my 1940’s school dresses on that small board, working them gently
around to get the maximum puff without pressing in a wrinkle.
I remember the very first things
I was allowed to press: a batch of our damask dinner napkins. There
wasn’t a whole lot you could do wrong in pressing a napkin, but
I managed to do it. I ironed over a stain that the washing machine
hadn’t removed. When my grandmother saw it, she explained that one
should never iron a stain. Ironing only “set” it. The preferred
response was to rewash the napkin. If the stain persisted, Grandmother
gave it a good scrub with salt and lemon juice, and put the napkin
out in the sun. After a day of bright California sunshine, the spot
was gone. Lemon juice, salt, and sun have been my method of choice
for treating stains on white things, ever since. They work better
than any pre-wash, bleach, or spot remover I’ve ever tried.
There are many other things my grandmothers
taught me. I remember learning how to hang out wet laundry on our
clothes reel, beginning with small items in the center, and working
around the circle so that large things like sheets and towels were
on the longer, outside lines. You had to be sure you gave each item
a good shake before pinning it up. Shirts were to be hung upside
down by the side seams. Pants were hung from the waist unless you
put them on a pants stretcher. You had to remember to go out and
bring in the things to be ironed while they were still damp, or
if you wanted to wait and do your ironing later, you had to let
them dry completely, and then sprinkle them a half hour before ironing.
You never sprinkled them unless you were sure you would be
able to iron them, because damp things would “sour” if they sat
too long. And when you took down the dry laundry, you worked from
the outside lines in, folding as you went, dropping the items into
the laundry basket. It was easiest to fold sheets while they were
on the line, so that they didn’t drag on the mossy bricks beneath
the reel.
I loved hanging out laundry. It was an
outdoor operation, and I was an outdoor girl.
Sometimes my grandmothers offered conflicting
advice about the things they taught me. One grandmother swore that
any dish with cooked tomatoes in it needed a pinch of sugar to “sweeten
the acid”. The other one thought that was rubbish. One grandmother
loved to repeat her mother’s rule for cleaning jewelry: “oil your
opals and boil your diamonds.” The other quietly suggested cold
water and ammonia for the diamonds, and a soft cloth to polish the
opals, if indeed one were fortunate enough to have any. One felt
that buttered soda crackers served in a soup bowl of hot milk was
the perfect meal for a sick child no matter what the ailment. The
other was sure that milk would “add to the congestion” of a cold.
Most of the time, however, my grandmothers
agreed with each other. I doubt that there has ever been a pair
of mothers-in-law who lived together in greater harmony. They left
me with a store of knowledge, some practical:
- Serve from the left, remove from the right.
- For a cough, mix hot tea, honey & lemon juice (my mother would sneak in some bourbon).
- When you sew a button onto heavy fabric like an overcoat, put a matchstick under the button before you sew, and pull it out afterward. That way the button will have some play so that it won’t bind as it passes through the thick fabric of the buttonhole.
- Witch Hazel patted on any kind of bump makes it feel better.
- Prunes work.
…and some just generally worth knowing:
- Children love stories of the past, especially their family’s past.
- A hand laid gently on a shoulder can be like a benediction.
- Little nonsense poems and songs delight, and they stick with you forever.
- Grandparents are almost never too busy to read aloud to you.
Of course my grandmothers weren’t the only ones with good advice. The other day, my friend Pam and I were discussing how best to get along with someone you don’t really like, but must deal with from time to time. “As my grandmother always says,” she told me, “you can be nice and not get thick.”