Selected Essays
My personal essays have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, the Berkeley Monthly, and Mary Engelbreit's Home Companion Magazine.
A mother's ironing ritual pressed into memory forever
Cynthia Overbeck Bix, Special to The Chronicle
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
The other day I opened a glossy lifestyle magazine to find step-by-step instructions showing readers how to iron. Color photos showed well-manicured hands adjusting the fabric on an ironing board, pressing a shirt collar, creating knife-edge pleats on a skirt. The images were crisp and modern; they evoked visions of well-organized working women making sure they'd look their best at corporate meetings or sophisticated cocktail parties.
But for me, ironing evokes a different image. I see in my mind's eye our narrow kitchen on the second floor of our rambling old house in Baltimore. I'm 5 years old. The year is 1952, and it's a warm morning in September -- one that promises a day of Indian summer. It is 6 a.m. Usually I'm still asleep at this hour, but the dawning light has wakened me, and I wander into the kitchen, where I know my mother will have been up for a long while. She likes to have this precious hour or so to herself, when it's quiet and the day is new. And what my mother chooses to do with her time is to iron.
Sunlight glows through the pair of double-hung windows that look out on the grassy backyard below; the light lays down parallelograms of white on the checkered oilcloth that covers the kitchen table. My mother's ironing board is set up alongside the table, so she can glance up every now and then to see a robin perch on the open shutter, or watch for the milkman's truck rattling into the neighborhood.
The heavy, gleaming General Electric sits, heated and ready, on the ironing board. My mother moves quietly around the kitchen. Even at this hour, she looks neat and fresh. Her dark hair is combed in loose waves around her face, and her pinstriped blouse is tucked into the waistband of her full cotton skirt, which swishes softly as she walks. She opens the squat white refrigerator and pulls out a damp bundle of cloth. These are the clothes -- cotton blouses and shirts and aprons -- that she put through the washer the morning before. That afternoon, I'd watched her peg them out on the clothesline strung across our backyard, standing with her wicker laundry basket in the grass at her feet and a supply of wooden clothespins in her apron pocket. I followed her along as she worked, enjoying the warm sun and the tickle of the grass on my bare feet, feeling a comfortable companionship that didn't need words.
Soon, the pieces of clothing formed a curtain of white and blue, flowers and stripes, and they flapped in the breeze until they were crackling dry and smelled of fresh air. I ran along the row, playing my private game, ducking back and forth under the blowing fabric without letting it touch me. Toward the end of the day, my mother gathered the pieces into her basket again, lugged them upstairs and sprinkled each one with water from a bottle with a perforated top. Rolled into a damp ball, they went into the fridge so they wouldn't get mildewed overnight. Now, in the early morning, they're ready for the iron.
As I watch, my mother slides the iron's tip expertly around the curves of a shirt collar. She methodically lays out first one sleeve, then the other, ironing each one so it's perfectly flat and sharply creased on the edges. Next comes the body of the shirt, which gets rotated around the end of the ironing board so that each section can be pressed just so, from yoke to tails.
In no time at all, my mother whisks the crisp, smooth shirt off the ironing board and onto a wire hanger. Without missing a beat, she picks up the next one. In her rhythmic, fluid actions, I sense a calm satisfaction. She doesn't iron our clothes because we have important places to wear them. For her, being clean and neat is just something she requires as part of ordinary civilized life, and she takes pride in keeping up that standard. As I sit watching, with my elbows on the table and my chin propped in my hand, I feel that everything is as it should be.
This ritual and all its details are pressed into my memory with absolute clarity, even all these years later. When I put a blouse over my own ironing board, it's as if my mother's hands have slipped into mine, as into a pair of gloves, and my hands just follow the motions exactly as I remember them. And, like my mother, I feel a certain contemplative pleasure as I iron. It's a process that leaves the mind free to wander or dream.
As much as I enjoy ironing, I don't do it as regularly, or as well, as my mother did. But this morning, when I had no energy for tackling a demanding work project or making stressful phone calls, I grabbed a just-washed shirt, wrinkled and pebbly, out of the dryer and set up my ironing board in front of the open window in my bedroom. The weather was already warm -- Indian summer. I turned on soft music, but a minute later I stopped the CD. I let my thoughts run on unaccompanied.
And as I moved my hot iron carefully around the shirt collar, down along the sleeves, around the body of the shirt, the past and the present merged gently in a cloud of fragrant steam.
http://www.sfgate.com/homeandgarden/article/A-mother-s-ironing-ritual-pressed-into-memory-2541199.php
Cynthia Overbeck Bix, Special to The Chronicle
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
The other day I opened a glossy lifestyle magazine to find step-by-step instructions showing readers how to iron. Color photos showed well-manicured hands adjusting the fabric on an ironing board, pressing a shirt collar, creating knife-edge pleats on a skirt. The images were crisp and modern; they evoked visions of well-organized working women making sure they'd look their best at corporate meetings or sophisticated cocktail parties.
But for me, ironing evokes a different image. I see in my mind's eye our narrow kitchen on the second floor of our rambling old house in Baltimore. I'm 5 years old. The year is 1952, and it's a warm morning in September -- one that promises a day of Indian summer. It is 6 a.m. Usually I'm still asleep at this hour, but the dawning light has wakened me, and I wander into the kitchen, where I know my mother will have been up for a long while. She likes to have this precious hour or so to herself, when it's quiet and the day is new. And what my mother chooses to do with her time is to iron.
Sunlight glows through the pair of double-hung windows that look out on the grassy backyard below; the light lays down parallelograms of white on the checkered oilcloth that covers the kitchen table. My mother's ironing board is set up alongside the table, so she can glance up every now and then to see a robin perch on the open shutter, or watch for the milkman's truck rattling into the neighborhood.
The heavy, gleaming General Electric sits, heated and ready, on the ironing board. My mother moves quietly around the kitchen. Even at this hour, she looks neat and fresh. Her dark hair is combed in loose waves around her face, and her pinstriped blouse is tucked into the waistband of her full cotton skirt, which swishes softly as she walks. She opens the squat white refrigerator and pulls out a damp bundle of cloth. These are the clothes -- cotton blouses and shirts and aprons -- that she put through the washer the morning before. That afternoon, I'd watched her peg them out on the clothesline strung across our backyard, standing with her wicker laundry basket in the grass at her feet and a supply of wooden clothespins in her apron pocket. I followed her along as she worked, enjoying the warm sun and the tickle of the grass on my bare feet, feeling a comfortable companionship that didn't need words.
Soon, the pieces of clothing formed a curtain of white and blue, flowers and stripes, and they flapped in the breeze until they were crackling dry and smelled of fresh air. I ran along the row, playing my private game, ducking back and forth under the blowing fabric without letting it touch me. Toward the end of the day, my mother gathered the pieces into her basket again, lugged them upstairs and sprinkled each one with water from a bottle with a perforated top. Rolled into a damp ball, they went into the fridge so they wouldn't get mildewed overnight. Now, in the early morning, they're ready for the iron.
As I watch, my mother slides the iron's tip expertly around the curves of a shirt collar. She methodically lays out first one sleeve, then the other, ironing each one so it's perfectly flat and sharply creased on the edges. Next comes the body of the shirt, which gets rotated around the end of the ironing board so that each section can be pressed just so, from yoke to tails.
In no time at all, my mother whisks the crisp, smooth shirt off the ironing board and onto a wire hanger. Without missing a beat, she picks up the next one. In her rhythmic, fluid actions, I sense a calm satisfaction. She doesn't iron our clothes because we have important places to wear them. For her, being clean and neat is just something she requires as part of ordinary civilized life, and she takes pride in keeping up that standard. As I sit watching, with my elbows on the table and my chin propped in my hand, I feel that everything is as it should be.
This ritual and all its details are pressed into my memory with absolute clarity, even all these years later. When I put a blouse over my own ironing board, it's as if my mother's hands have slipped into mine, as into a pair of gloves, and my hands just follow the motions exactly as I remember them. And, like my mother, I feel a certain contemplative pleasure as I iron. It's a process that leaves the mind free to wander or dream.
As much as I enjoy ironing, I don't do it as regularly, or as well, as my mother did. But this morning, when I had no energy for tackling a demanding work project or making stressful phone calls, I grabbed a just-washed shirt, wrinkled and pebbly, out of the dryer and set up my ironing board in front of the open window in my bedroom. The weather was already warm -- Indian summer. I turned on soft music, but a minute later I stopped the CD. I let my thoughts run on unaccompanied.
And as I moved my hot iron carefully around the shirt collar, down along the sleeves, around the body of the shirt, the past and the present merged gently in a cloud of fragrant steam.
http://www.sfgate.com/homeandgarden/article/A-mother-s-ironing-ritual-pressed-into-memory-2541199.php
A Different Light |by Cynthia Overbeck Bix
Berkeley Monthly, July 200
Illustration by Susan Sanford
In those long, slow summers of my 1950s Baltimore childhood, we called them lightning bugs. “Fireflies” is so much more enchanting—a name that conjures up the fairy-like quality the insects have when they appear, twinkling randomly in the dark. Really, they should be called fairyflies. But lightning bugs they were, and we simultaneously took them for granted and found them entrancing.
After a long day of roller-skating and jumping rope, my little sister and I begged to go back outside after dinner. In the waning light, we ran barefoot on the prickly grass in the backyard, making dashes from the “safe” spots, the oblong patches of light thrown by the kitchen windows, through the danger zones—the dark splotches in between. But the lightning bugs were always there, winking in the darkness like friendly spirits.
Sometimes on a close, still evening when the temperature stayed around 90 and the humidity stayed right up with it, our parents would say the hoped-for words, “C’mon, kids, hop in the car and we’ll go out to the Big Dipper.”
To read the entire essay, please go to http://www.themonthly.com/previous/2009/0907.html
Berkeley Monthly, July 200
Illustration by Susan Sanford
In those long, slow summers of my 1950s Baltimore childhood, we called them lightning bugs. “Fireflies” is so much more enchanting—a name that conjures up the fairy-like quality the insects have when they appear, twinkling randomly in the dark. Really, they should be called fairyflies. But lightning bugs they were, and we simultaneously took them for granted and found them entrancing.
After a long day of roller-skating and jumping rope, my little sister and I begged to go back outside after dinner. In the waning light, we ran barefoot on the prickly grass in the backyard, making dashes from the “safe” spots, the oblong patches of light thrown by the kitchen windows, through the danger zones—the dark splotches in between. But the lightning bugs were always there, winking in the darkness like friendly spirits.
Sometimes on a close, still evening when the temperature stayed around 90 and the humidity stayed right up with it, our parents would say the hoped-for words, “C’mon, kids, hop in the car and we’ll go out to the Big Dipper.”
To read the entire essay, please go to http://www.themonthly.com/previous/2009/0907.html
Keeping House: Tales told by the treasures in a trunk
Cynthia Overbeck Bix, Special to The Chronicle
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Photo: Chronicle/Darryl Bush
My family's battered old trunk sits at the foot of my bed, where it's come to rest after years in the front hallway of my parents' house. Opening the lid releases a musty smell that speaks of old houses and small-town museums. The inside is lined with bright blue paper, bordered in faded red and embellished with two cutouts - a cockatoo and the bonneted head of a Victorian girl.
According to my mother, her great-grandfather found the trunk washed up on a rock-strewn beach. But who knows for sure? It looks like a pirate's treasure chest; only in this case, its treasures are family keepsakes and photographs my mother stored inside. And the real treasures are not even the things themselves but the stories - and the mysteries - that go with them.
I rummage through the contents and dredge up leather-bound photograph albums that chronicle the lives of my parents and those of their parents and grandparents. In a small box are my father's Navy pilot's wings, and I find one silk stocking from the pair my mother wore as a World War II bride. I draw its filmy length across the palm of my hand, thinking of her dark-haired glamour and wondering what happened to the other stocking.
I find a blue needlepoint piece, stitched with a floral design by my mother's mother, destined for a dining room chair or a footrest but never used. Wrapped carefully in tissue paper is a black lace scarf that has browned with age.
When I was a child, I accepted the family stories of these treasures as gospel. Take the lace scarf. My mother maintained that it was given to her English great-grandmother, Hannah, by none other than Queen Victoria. Supposedly, Hannah was one of the queen's ladies-in-waiting. When she left the queen's service to marry, the queen bestowed the lace upon her as a parting gift. What a lovely story - and one that had the great merit of giving our family a claim to patrician roots. As a little girl, I reveled in the romantic notion that I was descended from English nobility.
Unfortunately, when I recently found a Web site purporting to list all the household retainers of Queen Victoria, my great-great-grandmother wasn't among them. Maybe she was only a chamber maid, in which case the family pedigree takes a sharp nosedive. But where did the lace come from? It's a refined piece, of the kind worn by Victorian ladies over their elaborate coiffures or around their white shoulders. Not typically a possession for a chambermaid. The mystery remains.
To read the entire essay, please go to http://www.sfgate.com/homeandgarden/article/Keeping-House-Tales-told-by-the-treasures-in-a-2545577.php
Cynthia Overbeck Bix, Special to The Chronicle
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Photo: Chronicle/Darryl Bush
My family's battered old trunk sits at the foot of my bed, where it's come to rest after years in the front hallway of my parents' house. Opening the lid releases a musty smell that speaks of old houses and small-town museums. The inside is lined with bright blue paper, bordered in faded red and embellished with two cutouts - a cockatoo and the bonneted head of a Victorian girl.
According to my mother, her great-grandfather found the trunk washed up on a rock-strewn beach. But who knows for sure? It looks like a pirate's treasure chest; only in this case, its treasures are family keepsakes and photographs my mother stored inside. And the real treasures are not even the things themselves but the stories - and the mysteries - that go with them.
I rummage through the contents and dredge up leather-bound photograph albums that chronicle the lives of my parents and those of their parents and grandparents. In a small box are my father's Navy pilot's wings, and I find one silk stocking from the pair my mother wore as a World War II bride. I draw its filmy length across the palm of my hand, thinking of her dark-haired glamour and wondering what happened to the other stocking.
I find a blue needlepoint piece, stitched with a floral design by my mother's mother, destined for a dining room chair or a footrest but never used. Wrapped carefully in tissue paper is a black lace scarf that has browned with age.
When I was a child, I accepted the family stories of these treasures as gospel. Take the lace scarf. My mother maintained that it was given to her English great-grandmother, Hannah, by none other than Queen Victoria. Supposedly, Hannah was one of the queen's ladies-in-waiting. When she left the queen's service to marry, the queen bestowed the lace upon her as a parting gift. What a lovely story - and one that had the great merit of giving our family a claim to patrician roots. As a little girl, I reveled in the romantic notion that I was descended from English nobility.
Unfortunately, when I recently found a Web site purporting to list all the household retainers of Queen Victoria, my great-great-grandmother wasn't among them. Maybe she was only a chamber maid, in which case the family pedigree takes a sharp nosedive. But where did the lace come from? It's a refined piece, of the kind worn by Victorian ladies over their elaborate coiffures or around their white shoulders. Not typically a possession for a chambermaid. The mystery remains.
To read the entire essay, please go to http://www.sfgate.com/homeandgarden/article/Keeping-House-Tales-told-by-the-treasures-in-a-2545577.php
Remembering Aunt Emma: A breakfast set and one photograph conjure a relative never known
Cynthia Overbeck Bix, Special to The Chronicle
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
Photo: Katy Raddatz / SFC
A breakfast set from the '20s or '30 and one photo conjure a relative never known. Chronicle photo by Katy Raddatz
A bone-penetrating dampness in the house left me with a chill I couldn't shake. I was sure I was coming down with a sore throat. What I needed was a little warmth and indulgence -- something more than an ordinary cup of tea.
Then I remembered Aunt Emma's breakfast set. My parents left the dishes to me because the set had once belonged to my father's sister, Emma; I had been given my middle name in her honor.
I took the dishes out of my dining room hutch and laid them on the kitchen table. They're vintage 1920s or '30s pottery, simple and unadorned. The glaze is a warm shade of rust fading into yellow, like the colors of a desert sunset. There's a plate and bowl, cup and saucer, a fat-bellied teapot and milk pitcher, an egg cup on a pedestal, and, best of all, a small matching dome with a steam hole in the top, meant for covering the plate to keep food warm. All of the pieces are fashioned on a small scale, almost like doll dishes for grown-ups. To read the entire essay, please go to http://www.sfgate.com/homeandgarden/article/Remembering-Aunt-Emma-A-breakfast-set-and-one-2521048.php
Cynthia Overbeck Bix, Special to The Chronicle
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
Photo: Katy Raddatz / SFC
A breakfast set from the '20s or '30 and one photo conjure a relative never known. Chronicle photo by Katy Raddatz
A bone-penetrating dampness in the house left me with a chill I couldn't shake. I was sure I was coming down with a sore throat. What I needed was a little warmth and indulgence -- something more than an ordinary cup of tea.
Then I remembered Aunt Emma's breakfast set. My parents left the dishes to me because the set had once belonged to my father's sister, Emma; I had been given my middle name in her honor.
I took the dishes out of my dining room hutch and laid them on the kitchen table. They're vintage 1920s or '30s pottery, simple and unadorned. The glaze is a warm shade of rust fading into yellow, like the colors of a desert sunset. There's a plate and bowl, cup and saucer, a fat-bellied teapot and milk pitcher, an egg cup on a pedestal, and, best of all, a small matching dome with a steam hole in the top, meant for covering the plate to keep food warm. All of the pieces are fashioned on a small scale, almost like doll dishes for grown-ups. To read the entire essay, please go to http://www.sfgate.com/homeandgarden/article/Remembering-Aunt-Emma-A-breakfast-set-and-one-2521048.php
Treasured gifts -- and the box they came in
Cynthia Overbeck Bix, Special to The Chronicle
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Photo: Eric Luse / SFC
It's a gift . . . from Capwell's.
On every birthday and Christmas during the years I was growing up in the Bay Area, my sister and I could be sure that underneath the wrapping paper, the boxes that held our gifts would be from Capwell's Department Store. The familiar gold-hued cardboard box with its graceful white curlicue designs framing the word "Capwell's" might open to reveal a frilly cotton nightgown or a new book or a button-eyed stuffed kitten.
Capwell's was a classic old-fashioned department store that offered everything from clothing and books to mattresses and fine china, all under one roof. Its many departments were bounded by grids of wide aisles and anchored by islands of lighted glass display cases. Behind every counter stood a small cluster of salespeople -- some bored, some haughty and some genuinely eager to help a customer compare china patterns or find just the right pair of socks.
Our family discovered Capwell's in 1961, just after we had moved from Baltimore to El Cerrito. From the moment my mother found it, the store and its location in the El Cerrito Plaza shopping center appealed to her Midwestern practicality and economy.
"Isn't it wonderful?" she enthused. "They've got everything we need right here -- we really don't need to shop anyplace else!"
Other people -- perhaps more affluent or adventurous than my mother -- probably shopped at a wider variety of stores and upscale boutiques. But how much easier it was for a busy, one-car family of four to shop at this one, convenient place. To read the entire essay, please go to http://www.sfgate.com/homeandgarden/article/Treasured-gifts-and-the-box-they-came-in-2484071.php
Cynthia Overbeck Bix, Special to The Chronicle
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Photo: Eric Luse / SFC
It's a gift . . . from Capwell's.
On every birthday and Christmas during the years I was growing up in the Bay Area, my sister and I could be sure that underneath the wrapping paper, the boxes that held our gifts would be from Capwell's Department Store. The familiar gold-hued cardboard box with its graceful white curlicue designs framing the word "Capwell's" might open to reveal a frilly cotton nightgown or a new book or a button-eyed stuffed kitten.
Capwell's was a classic old-fashioned department store that offered everything from clothing and books to mattresses and fine china, all under one roof. Its many departments were bounded by grids of wide aisles and anchored by islands of lighted glass display cases. Behind every counter stood a small cluster of salespeople -- some bored, some haughty and some genuinely eager to help a customer compare china patterns or find just the right pair of socks.
Our family discovered Capwell's in 1961, just after we had moved from Baltimore to El Cerrito. From the moment my mother found it, the store and its location in the El Cerrito Plaza shopping center appealed to her Midwestern practicality and economy.
"Isn't it wonderful?" she enthused. "They've got everything we need right here -- we really don't need to shop anyplace else!"
Other people -- perhaps more affluent or adventurous than my mother -- probably shopped at a wider variety of stores and upscale boutiques. But how much easier it was for a busy, one-car family of four to shop at this one, convenient place. To read the entire essay, please go to http://www.sfgate.com/homeandgarden/article/Treasured-gifts-and-the-box-they-came-in-2484071.php
Stitched tight over generations: Scraps of fabric and the nimble fingers of 3 women make a fine quilt -- in 60 years
Cynthia Overbeck Bix, Special to The Chronicle
Saturday, March 17, 2007
Photo by Liz Hafalia / sfc
Three pairs of hands made my quilt: my grandmother's, my mother's and my own.
The fabrics and the stitches connect us, but so do other, intangible threads -- even though I saw my grandmother only twice in my life.
To read the entire essay, please go to http://www.sfgate.com/homeandgarden/article/Stitched-tight-over-generations-Scraps-of-2569788.php
Cynthia Overbeck Bix, Special to The Chronicle
Saturday, March 17, 2007
Photo by Liz Hafalia / sfc
Three pairs of hands made my quilt: my grandmother's, my mother's and my own.
The fabrics and the stitches connect us, but so do other, intangible threads -- even though I saw my grandmother only twice in my life.
To read the entire essay, please go to http://www.sfgate.com/homeandgarden/article/Stitched-tight-over-generations-Scraps-of-2569788.php
Downtown finery never matched up to Mom's
Cynthia Overbeck Bix, Special to The Chronicle
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Photo by Jeff Chiu/SFC
Just last week, when I needed to hem new curtains I'd bought for my son's room, I took the dust cover off my mother's trusty old Singer sewing machine, the one she'd used for years. Last summer, after she died and we sold her house, I took it home with me.
Somehow, the Singer looks lonely and misplaced in its new spot on the desk in my guest bedroom. At my parents' house, Mom had it set up in a closet. Years ago, my dad had converted a small hall closet into a sewing area for her. He had built in a counter to hold the sewing machine, and added shelves and drawers for all the paraphernalia -- the scissors and the boxes of zippers, the spools of thread and remnants of fabric. Mom had hung up her old wall lamp with the flowered plastic shade, and she was ready to get down to business. To read the entire essay, please go to http://www.sfgate.com/homeandgarden/article/Downtown-finery-never-matched-up-to-Mom-s-2513768.php
Cynthia Overbeck Bix, Special to The Chronicle
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Photo by Jeff Chiu/SFC
Just last week, when I needed to hem new curtains I'd bought for my son's room, I took the dust cover off my mother's trusty old Singer sewing machine, the one she'd used for years. Last summer, after she died and we sold her house, I took it home with me.
Somehow, the Singer looks lonely and misplaced in its new spot on the desk in my guest bedroom. At my parents' house, Mom had it set up in a closet. Years ago, my dad had converted a small hall closet into a sewing area for her. He had built in a counter to hold the sewing machine, and added shelves and drawers for all the paraphernalia -- the scissors and the boxes of zippers, the spools of thread and remnants of fabric. Mom had hung up her old wall lamp with the flowered plastic shade, and she was ready to get down to business. To read the entire essay, please go to http://www.sfgate.com/homeandgarden/article/Downtown-finery-never-matched-up-to-Mom-s-2513768.php
