This is a start to a piece that I’m working on now. It’s 1967 and I’m 8 years-old…

Daddy slowly slides the black, leather belt out of the loops of his pressed, gray pants, the sharp creases run down his long legs, the fresh finish ironed by Mom, the iron gliding smoothly on the ironing board, the kitchen air invisibly clouded with the magic of Niagara spray starch. Mom’s jet-black hair, tightly pin-curled with black bobby pins against her head, makes her high cheek bones tauter, her head smaller, as shoulders, patterned with blue violets and a ring of white-petaled, yellow-centered daisies, circle around her aproned neck. She sways with the soothing rhythm of the iron’s motion and sings along with the Beatles on the kitchen radio, all you need is love, da-da-da-da-da. Mom says that Niagara makes ironing shirt collars and children’s clothes a breeze.