Ironing out those creases for one last and final time
A Different View with Dave O’Connell
I was ironing our eldest son’s tee-shirts for the last time on Sunday night, and watching the telly as a young Sinead O’Connor, resplendent with those big eyes and a buzz cut, was singing Nothing Compares 2 U on The Late Late Show, back in 1990.
This was the last time, because, at the age of 22, he’s finally moving out – not emigrating or even leaving Galway, but living away from home for the first time nonetheless.
There was no great symmetry to the fact that the soundtrack to the ironing was LLS highlights from back in Gaybo’s day, because Cian wasn’t even born for another nine years after Sinéad was number one.
But I do remember the first time I ironed anything belonging to him. It was half-a-dozen tiny vests and baby-grows that were too small to turn an iron in. All of them dried on one radiator.
He wasn’t even home from Holles Street then, but he was going through these tiny outfits like Imelda Marcos used to go through shoes.
Then, as now, there wasn’t really any point in ironing his clothes – only, for some inexplicable reason, I kind of liked doing it.
Coming from a generation who pressed their jeans – on the seams, in my defence; not with a frontal cease – I think this ironing obsession caused more embarrassment than appreciation over the years.
Over the years, we graduated from the tiny vests and baby-grows to the trousers will frontal fasteners and – as training advanced – to those big-boy dungarees that only opened by unfastening the straps.
You can signpost some of the big occasions through ironing; the shirt for the First Communion, Confirmation, Debs; the suit-trousers for similar days.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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