in addition to dirty towels...

...included in the laundry I do most every week for church are the little white square fabric communion covers. Theoretically keeping the bits of bread we dip in the grape juice sanitary and germ free for about an hour until it is time to dunk your bread square and consume the 'host'. My friend P. made the white cloth covers. Some are done with cross-stitching, red thread that says: 'in remembrance', and some are just neat little hemmed white squares that she did some fancy needle work on. She said the plain ones were some fabric I gave her that were part of a 'stash' of cloth from my mom. So that's pretty neat, to think that my mom had a hand in providing them as we partake each week.

I bring the nasty, smelly towels home each week, wash, bleach to get as clean as possible, though they look like some one has been mopping the floor or parking lot with them. Dry, fold and return to the kitchen to be reused.

When I went by the middle of the week, found some of the communion squares in with the wet dirty towels and brought them home to wash. They soaked in a bit of bleach for a while (grape juice stains) and I ironed them yesterday afternoon when I got home. I am most decidedly, definitely not one for ironing. Thankful for the advent of 'wrinkle free' (though not a fan of synthetic fabrics) and things that can come out of the dryer, get hung up right away and be passable without needing to be pressed. 

But saying that, I will also admit that every time I get my iron out to do the communion covers, I think of my mom: who taught me how to iron by starting me off on my dad's handkerchiefs and pillow cases. Now wondering if that is how her mom taught her to iron?  I don't even own an ironing board, so have to lay a towel down on the kitchen counter to do the little white squares, about the size of a man's pocket hankie. And every time I do, I think of my mom.

P.S.: I'm nearly certain she did not feel the necessity of teaching my brother how to iron. And absolutely certain the weekends he would come home from college with a laundry bag full of dirty clothes, she spent the whole weekend washing and ironing his shirts for him to return looking sharp on Sunday night.