To this day, I can’t iron a dress shirt for Sunday without thinking of my mother, who spent more time at the ironing board than my father did at his drafting table.

With three girls in cotton blouses or pleated skirts, pajamas or pedal-pushers, Mama stood for hours each week, it seemed, ironing and hanging clothes on hangers; ironing and folding handkerchiefs or pillow cases; ironing everything in the house from tablecloths to Daddy’s boxer shorts.

The process never varied. Since she never owned a dryer, Mama hung out clothes every morning winter and summer, yanking sheets away from the clothespins in a mad rush when an afternoon thundershower appeared imminent.

Towels and bed linens were whiter than white when bleached by the blistering sun. Sometimes, they smelled like the sweet peas on the nearby fence or, later in the fall, chrysanthemums. Most of the wrinkles were blown away by a gentle breeze in the back yard where three rows of clothesline stretched from their posts.

It took all three rows when curtains or bedspreads were washed, or when she starched our crinoline petticoats and hung them to stiffen like concrete in a form.

Most of the wrinkles disappeared but not all, so back to the ironing board she marched – only after sprinkling the shirts or shorts with water, then wadding them up as tight as the rubber band on my ponytail.

Before they soured, she always said, she better be about her ironing, no matter how hot the day and how many times she wiped sweat from her forehead or cheeks. I can still hear the soft sizzle of the heavy black iron as she pressed it against the damp napkins or shirtsleeves, whichever item she grabbed next.

There were no steam irons then. Nor do I remember spray starch in a can. Mama soaked certain things in a boiling pot of water and a glob of starch; others she didn’t want so crisp that they crinkled.

From time to time, an item merely needed to be “pressed,” a word different from “ironed” and one we girls learned to accomplish before being entrusted to the real task: big-girl ironing, where the risk of scorching forever loomed.

As we grew older, Mama carefully taught us how to iron a dress shirt, starting with the collar – first inside, then out – then the back shoulder seam, to the full back of the shirt, then to the sleeves, front, back, watching not to crease near the buttons. Now, to the front, ironing from inside, under the buttons, then flipping right side up and ironing smooth one panel, then the other with the pocket.

To this day, I like to hear the creaking of the old ironing board and smell the freshness of cotton shirts being ironed – slowly and meticulously – in the manner I was taught. My touch has never been as deft as my mother’s, but I can blame polyester for that.