Ironing. That’s where my thoughts lie as we enter into the Thanksgiving weekend. Not in wrestling over the aesthetics of a flower arrangement or the culinary challenges of a pecan pie. Nope. Ironing.

Thanksgiving tends to turn our thoughts towards the past. What is more sentimental than hauling out our mother’s crystal? Or running our hands across the leaves our granddad made to extend the dining-room table?

But hauling out the iron offers something in the sentimental department too, particularly at Thanksgiving. Only an iron can change a ball of rectangles into crisp napkins for a well-set table. Only an iron can transform a wad of fabric into a tier of ruffles or wrinkly ribbons into cascades of sashes.

Clearly I’m from a generation that ironed. We had no choice but to be at least marginally good at it. And even when I complain about it, I find it to be a surprisingly rewarding task.

At holiday time, ironing takes on more urgency. For example (don’t tell), last night I ironed sheets for our weekend guests. I rarely do such things for myself (although once my childhood best friend and I proudly ironed her mother’s towels!). For some reason, though, the sheets did not come out as well as my mother’s. I tell myself that the new-fangled fabrics are at fault, rather than my technique.

Of course, she ironed everything. When I got big enough (maybe ten), she taught me to iron. We tended to iron on Saturdays after lunch. But we didn’t iron in silence. Our ironing coincided with the radio broadcasts of The Metropolitan Opera’s live Saturday matinees, sponsored then by Texaco and sent from New York City across America.

If you are fortunate enough to have grown up with these broadcasts, you will recall not only the gorgeous voices of the singers, but also the equally sonorous voices of the moderators who introduced and explained the operas, particularly Milton Cross (43 seasons) and Peter Allen (29 seasons).

Then, there was the infamous Metropolitan Opera Quiz held during one of the intermissions. The questions seemed impossibly hard to me, particularly when they were so gently posed by the legendary Edward Downes who served as moderator of the Opera Quiz from 1958 to 1996.

I remember being astonished, week by week, that my mother knew so many of the answers. Despite growing up in an impoverished immigrant family in a Brooklyn tenement, my mother went to the opera. As a girl, she stood for pennies every chance she got in the upper galleries at the gorgeous “Old Met.” I don’t know how common it was for a young person in (what we today would call) her distressed socio-economical circumstances to do that, but she did. She would take the train into the city, usually alone or with one sibling, and let her life be transformed by the beauty she found there.

How she loved to sing! She never talked about the operas, or her lack of chances to train her own talented voice. Instead, she just sang: songs from Broadway musicals (mostly Rogers and Hammerstein), opera arias, and hymns.

If only I could hear that voice again. If only she could walk once more by my ironing board and sharply say “You missed that corner.” Or, “Hurry up, we have other things to do.” If only.

A child cannot value the treasures bequeathed while engaged in the day-to-day tasks of life. The transfer and acquisition of practical skills, even when accompanied by complaints and tears, serve as building blocks to a fruitful adult life. Only decades later can we understand the value of what we learned in those mundane, puzzling, or annoying moments of childhood.

So, as I iron the dinner napkins in the basement of our new-old house, I revel in memories. And when I set the table with my mother’s china and make her dressing and sweet-potato casserole, I’ll remember ironing napkins with her. And give thanks for the music she brought into my life—both the magic of those Saturday Metropolitan Opera broadcasts and the fragments of melodies that radiated daily from her voice into my heart.