Olsen's Standing here, Ironing

I'm sure it was required reading when I read Tillie Olsen's short story "As I Stand Here Ironing," where a mother reflects on the choices she made in raising her daughter Emily, and the consequences of those decisions.

It's a short story, even for short stories, and I got so into it that I barely breathed through the first reading. Then I mentally wrestled through the second reading. Then I handled Eric the baby and went on a long walk so I could deconstruct the text while walking by myself.

I have a different perspective now, twenty years later, reading the text at this phase in my life, where mothering little children is what I do all day and all night.

I am ever aware, now, that the way I treat my children is shaping the people they are becoming and how they perceive themselves.

I'm aware of that. Which is what I bring to this text that I didn't know when I was twenty years old, sitting in a literature class where I probably had nothing to say when the professor asked, "So, what did you think?"

So it's a different text this time, and I am a different woman reading it.

So I took a long walk and thought about mothering and just what it is that I'm doing and trying to do and how I want to tread gently and kindly in my children's lives.

As I walked back near home, I heard the baby fussing from the open upstairs bedroom window. It was the time of the night where he wants his mommy and he wants to eat. And I could hear that he wasn't really seriously crying, just sort of starting to get worked up.

So as I walked in the door, before I went to the baby, I hugged each of my other kids and smiled at them. Gave them each a full dose of my attention before I dashed off to do something else.

Go find a copy. Then tell me what you think. It's a quick read, really, ten minutes. There are lots of anthologies that have it, but I used Points of View, Revised Edition by James Moffett.

If I could convince a book club to read it, I'd do it. Pair it with Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper, which I'd love to discuss that with intelligent women and analyze the wallpaper as a symbol for depression.

Here's just a teaser for one little tiny thing I'd love to discuss, from Ironing,

In this, the mother is recalling that her daughter was a good child who did more than should be expected of a child, even at a very young age. The mother asks herself, recalling this, "What in me demanded that goodness in her? And what was the cost, the cost to her of such goodness?"

See? That's a good start for discussion right there.

I don't think this story is just for mothers. It's for anyone who has been a mother or a daughter. Or anyone who has been a child or been a parent. So, everyone who has ever had a family with imperfect people in it.

You know. All of us.