Sleeves First

My grandmother passed away very unexpectedly when I was about 10 years old. She was killed by a shoplifter while he was in the course of stealing a belt and a pair of shoes. Needless to say, this came as a horrific shock to my whole family. I was very, very close with my grandmother and she remains one of the kindest people I ever met. I remember being there for some of the time at the hospital and the funeral, but in the aftermath, there were a lot of things that my parents needed to do that did not require having a child underfoot.

I returned from Alabama where she lived to our home in Tennessee. One of my mom's best friends came and stayed with me.

I had no idea what to expect from this visit. Her friend was always super nice to me, but I did not know her fairly well. What I remembered most was that she had what seemed like a really unique Southern accent (I would later learn it was from the Carolinas) and that she and my mom laughed really loud when they drank white wine.

In the wake of my grandmother's death, I had basically been given a "free pass." I remember being more or less liberated from chores and being given the option to consume as much barbeque or ice cream as I wanted from the places down the road from my grandparents' home. I expected the same of this home stay.

I was incorrect.

"Honey," she said, "You need to have button-down shirts for school, don't you?"

"Yeah," I responded, somewhat apprehensively.

"How good are you at ironing?"

I was not a stranger to ironing. Growing up in a strictly Catholic family and attending religious schools, I had fumbled some ironing once or twice in a pinch, but compared to my mother (or my grandmother) I was a rank amateur.

"I'm OK."

"Great - I'll get some laundry going and we can get that sorted. Where does your mother keep the starch?"

I had not wielded starch. I wondered where this was going. I kind of missed the ice cream and barbeque.

She washed what seemed like a collosal amount of shirts - mine, my brother's, and my father's.

"You need to hang them up right out of the dryer, so they don't wrinkle," she said.

We did that.

"Now, let's get to work. Why don't you do one first?"

I did so. I thought I did a respectable job, but she threw a wrench into it by asking my why I did not starch the shirt too. The real reason was because I had never starched a shirt, but I was not about to admit that.

"I was, um, going to do that last." I proceeded to shellack the right shoulder of one of my father's shirts.

She gave me a long, thoughtful look after I turned the shirt into a sheet of plywood.

"Let's take this from the studs," she told me, "I'll show you how to do this right."

She proceeded to show me how to properly iron a shirt. This included a practical set of advice.

"You always start with the sleeves first," she said, "because if you do them last, you'll wrinkle the body of the shirt."

As she went, she provided all sorts of guidance. How to do the shoulders. How to line up the two folded seams in the back. How to do the collar without leaving iron marks. How to evenly apply starch. After she provided all of this instruction, she had me implement it - for probably a good twenty shirts or so. After that, we did slacks.

At first, I resented it. My grandmother had been violently killed. I was supposed to be getting ice cream and barbeque treatment. She was working me like a dog. Over repetition, however, something peculiar happened. I got so focused on the work itself that I kind of forgot about the black cloud that had been hanging around my family and, more importantly, myself. (I had been very close to my grandmother - looking at it years later, I realize that I was in shock.)

We did not stop with the shirts. We did pants too. We also cleaned the kitchen and then we mopped the floors. The whole time, I got a steady stream of advice on the best way to do these tasks. I did not realize it at the time, but what I understand now is that we were doing a form of meditation. Those tasks were a way to occupy the front of the mind while the rest processed.

We had probably worked for a good solid eight hours, cleaning the whole house. After we got everything sorted, we made dinner. Again, a learning experience. I had never made brisket before, but she showed me a way to braise it using (of all things) Dr. Pepper. We did that and baked potatoes and a salad.

Halfway through dinner (which was delicious), I burst into tears. I had not cried when I learned of my grandmother's violent injury or death. I did not cry at the funeral. I just remember being stoic. But somehow, all that manual labor gave my mind the space it needed.

She was so sweet. She just got up, walked over to the other side of our ridiculously large dining room table, and held me while I cried. It lasted a good, long while. I don't know how long. In hindsight, I imagine she had been waiting for that because she was utterly unphased when I finally broke.

Something about that experience shifted things. It did not make the loss easier, per se, but somehow being able to let all of that emotion out eased a pressure that my young mind would not understand until many years later. I would not shed tears again for many, many years after that.

I think about her every time I have to iron a shirt. I still always start with the sleeves. I still use spray starch exactly the way she taught me. I still feel that same sense of accomplishment when I have a whole line of shirts hanging off the edge of an ironing board with the collars starched and the sleeves with razor-sharp creases.

I marvel at her insight. Well before I ever studied anything about Buddhism, she taught me a valuable lesson in how to immerse yourself in mundane task so your mind can do the things that it needs to. I learned about how this type of exercise is an absolute balm to the traumatized and grieving mind.

Later in my life, I would be in monasteries and learn about sitting and walking (and even eating) meditation and how to be mindful, but the first real dharma lesson I got was from a kind Southern woman while ironing shirts. In times of great suffering, there can be incredible freedom in simply putting your hands to mundane tasks and doing them well.

In the intervening years, I've taken what she showed me and put it to good use. I've made beds with human trafficking victims. I have scrubbed floors with victims of domestic violence. I have washed and peeled potatoes to make soup with homeless people. I've trimmed hedges with people at a sober living house. Anywhere there has been deep trauma and suffering, I've snuck in this little form of healing meditation. I've seen it do the same thing for them that it did for me. When that space really brought things home, I have tried to be compassionate just like she was. (You really get a sense of your life choices when you're hugging a recently sober man in the middle of hedge-trimming.)

The mantra is not some pretty piece of poetry or esoteric Buddhist phrase. It is always the same thing in the face of shock and trauma.

"Sleeves first."