Mrs.Betty HoityToity From The Past

Once in a while something you thought you left far behind snakes forward from between the pages of the past to grab you around the ankle. This morning it reached me through the telephone line.

I was still sitting in my home office finishing a few calls and reviewing a proposal. I hadn't slept well last night, so I felt like I was moving through molasses when the phone rang.

"Hello there, this is Betty HoityToityFromthePast."

The cultured New England voice hadn't changed a bit in the years since I stood in her laundry room pressing the fine boxer shorts and blouses that clothed the backs and bottoms of the HoityToityFromthePast household members.

Yes, I pressed boxer shorts in a past life. And they all wore blouses. Even Mr. HoityToityFromthePast. His "blouses" required careful attention because they were to be BOX folded and put in his drawers NOT simply arranged on a hanger.

Those had been transitional years for me. Years where my childhood faith collided so hard at the intersection of reality that I left the career I had shared with my husband for more than a decade. Years where I avoided even the slightest shadow of the tabernacle. And years where my prayers, if they could be called prayers, were more like whispers of rage and disappointment spit through clenched teeth in the direction of heaven.

They were also years that took me back to school. They were years pieced together with odd jobs that allowed me time to study, write and still spend time with my children. Years that I pressed boxers and blouses, polished silver trophies for a local polo Princess, cooked for folks richer than I, raked leaves, baked bread, spoon fed Jell-o to a cranky invalid who spit it back in my face, changed the diapers of the elderly and held the hand of a dying woman.

It wasn't living. It was existing and a means to an end.

There was a bit of desperation in Betty HoityToityFromthePast's voice this morning. Her regular girl was going to be gone for two weeks and she wondered if I could "press" in her absence. In that moment I realized that she never heard me when I told her my path for the future. A career path that I have followed with a fair degree of success. She didn't listen when I told her why I propped my text books on the window sill next to the ironing board so that I could study while I worked.

Her smile did hold a mild curiosity when she walked me around her estate in early spring to show me the sprightly yellow daffodils pushing their funny little faces toward the sun, and I launched into a full recital of "I wandered lonely as a cloud..."

She never really saw who I was though or who I hoped to become. And that remains a shame. I didn't plan on "pressing" and "piecing" forever.

This week I gave testimony in front of a governmental sub-committee assigned to review the plight of the underprivileged across the state. As a community leader I spoke directly and from my heart. Everyone laughed where they were supposed to laugh. And they all took notes. Mostly they looked me right in the eye. I liked that. They saw me. They heard me.

"As I followed the trajectory of my life..."

(You will forgive me for not mentioning the pressing/polishing/baking/raking years, but I knew they were there. They helped shape the heart that speaks with such passion today.)

I did learn some lessons from Betty HoityToityFromthePast.

1. Always write thank you notes. (E-mail doesn't count. This was a pet peeve of Mrs. HoityToityFromthePast's. One she would speak on for a full fifteen minutes if given the opportunity.)
2. Never look through people who work for you. Really see them.
3. Listen.
4. Listen.
5. When you have enough money, you can have your boxer shorts starched and folded.

I told Betty HoityToityFromthePast that I had finished school and was happily launched into a satisfying career. My pressing schedule didn't allow time for "pressing." I thanked her for thinking of me, but I took her number just in case I decide to offer my daughter a chance to build the character that can only come from ironing the boxer shorts and pressing the blouses of the rich and famous.