Priorities

 This is a historic day!  I found my husband with the iron actually poised over the ironing board! I don't remember his ironing in the 52 (now 62) years of marriage!  I think it must have been due to the little table-top ironing board I bought.  He didn't have to set up the big one.  Yesterday I found one of his knit shirts had been misplaced in the closet and it had some folds on it. I guess he decided to wear it today and attempted to to iron while I was getting ready.

"This looks terrible!" he said of the result.  It really didn't, but I could see some streaks because he had ironed it flat and the ridges from underneath showed through. He was surprised when I told him he should have slipped the shirt over the ironing board.  "I didn't know that!" he exclaimed and did it over.

I don't know why Howard considers ironing solely "women's work."  All of our sons iron, and at least one of our four sons-in-law. (The other may be old school like my husband.) Once when I visited my future husband's house as a teenager, his mother showed me his closet filled with 21 crisply ironed shirts she had done.  (Was she trying to tell me something?)  However, he is perfectly happy to take our ironing to "The Iron Man," a he-man type who obviously enjoys ironing (and is strong enough to do lots of it).

For all the years of our marriage, our tasks have been pretty much defined.  Howard went to work, and I handled household chores, except for yard work.  Now that he is (at least semi-) retired, we do a lot of things together that used to be my responsibility, such as shopping--grocery and other wise.

Cooking is still my domain, but my husband has found he likes washing dishes, if there aren't too many; however, he draws the line at loading the dishwasher.  He does the vacuuming, but I'm in charge of the laundry.  And he has Never ironed.  I've tried to show him how, saying its like sawing or sweeping, just back and forth movements, but he insists on making little tapping-like jabs or setting the iron down in a stamping motion and twisting it.

Well, I guess you can't teach an old dog new tricks, or at least that's what I thought until this morning.  One area in which we seem to have more in common now and more time for us is reading and discussing scripture.  Proverbs 27:17 says, "Iron sharpens iron; so a man sharpens the countenance of his friend." A lively discussion with my oldest, dearest friend is sure to keep us both sharp, and we'll leave the ironing to the Iron Man!