Whenever I iron an item of clothing, which is exactly and only when I feel like it, I think about Cookie. No, not cookies. I think of a girl from my high school class who was nicknamed Cookie and who became a homecoming princess in our senior year.  One time before class started, I was (as usual) hunched in my desk hoping no one would notice me, and Cookie was holding court with several nearby admirers.

“I ironed this blouse this morning,” warbled Cookie without even a trace of mean-girl malice in her heart, “and I forgot to do the sleeves! Can you imagine?” Without moving anything else, I cut my eyes over to Cookie’s blouse. From my vantage point I could not tell that the sleeves had been neglected, but I suppose it’s a good micro-cautionary tale that could survive a mild analogy. In the great ironing project of life, don’t forget the sleeves, or something like that.

Recalling this got me thinking about attention to detail, which in turn led me to thinking about taking care of those things in one’s immediate purview and giving less emotional energy to that which is out of one’s reach. My mother was a strong advocate of this point of view. When the chips were down, she would make sure her house was tidy, and then set about making a lemon merengue pie, or chocolate fudge with walnuts from the farm, or fresh blackberry cobbler. And I must say, having the brass and copper all a-sparkle and something delicious cooling on the counter (no, not the windowsill) could sometimes bring focus and peace to my anguished teenaged life.

Sometimes it seems like the whole world is on fire, that we humans have dropped this planet like a seagull trying to open a clam shell, that we poison everything we touch. I can’t fix any of that. But I can do some other stuff. For example, I can harvest a mess of delicious carrots from my backyard garden; I can make a mean pie crust; and I can carefully iron my very own sleeves. These things matter more than you might think.