seams

last night, just after 10pm, my mom ironed one of my shirts.

all day, she’d been fighting the cold i unknowingly passed on to her last week. i’d initially thought the sneezing and coughing i had were allergies, and by the time i realized they were the product of upper-respiratory cooties they’d already spread.

we’d spent the day out shopping and, by the time we got home, it was late afternoon, so i decided to just stay over. we’d watched The Event together, she’d taken her dose of nighttime cold medicine and she was on her way to bed, but we both remembered that i’d washed one of my dress shirts earlier, and it needed to be ironed before it dried completely.

i’m an ironing novice. most of the clothes i own are machine washable and tumble-dry-able. i don’t own an iron, nor an ironing board and, even if i did, i’m more apt to crease the living daylights out of something than to actually make it look pretty and smooth.

so, on the rare occasions when i do have to iron, it’s not without supervision.

and i tend to go v-e-r-y v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y, lest i singe a shirt or pair of pants or myself as i carefully move inch by inch. (irons scare me, frankly.)

last night, though, neither of us really felt like enduring the achingly slow process of me getting through the ironing of a single item of clothing.

“why don’t i just do it?” mom said. “it’ll take me two minutes.”

given that she was already feeling under the weather, i felt guilty and said, “yeah, but you shouldn’t have to iron my shirt for me.”

picking up the iron to begin, she said, “there will come a day when you’ll have to do your own ironing. let me do it for you while i can.”

in that moment, i suddenly felt a wave of terror and sadness sweep over my heart, and i quickly swallowed the tears that instantly welled in my eyes.