Grandpa's Iron

Every Sunday I used to iron shirts with my grandfather. We did it together in his little cottage in the countryside. He was retired by then, but he still pressed every shirt as if he were going to work.

“You have to feel the iron,” Grandpa Edwin would say. “Too hot, and you burn the cotton. Too cold, and it does nothing.” His old leather slippers used to squeak on the kitchen floor while he worked.

One quiet afternoon, the iron was hissing softly and the rain was falling outside. I asked him about the old days.

“I used to work down the coal mine,” he said. “From sixteen until it closed. Hard work. Black hands every night, no matter how much I washed them.”

“Did you like it?” I asked.

He was quiet for a moment, still moving the iron. “I liked the men. We looked after each other down there. That's the thing about the mine — it took your back, but it gave you a kind of spirit.”

I looked at his hands, smooth now, gentle on the cotton.

“Do you ever wonder what your life would have been,” I asked, “without the coal?”

He smiled. “Every day,” he said. “But then I wouldn't have learned to iron a shirt properly. And I wouldn't be here, teaching you. So I don't wonder for long.”