I Stand Here Ironing — Vocabulary
Tillie Olsen
(Auto-generated)

I stand here ironing, and what you asked me moves tormented back and forth with the iron.†1 more

They never have a picture of the children so I do not know if the girls still wear those gigantic red bows and the ravaged looks on the every other Sunday when parents can come to visit "unless otherwise notified"—as we were notified the first six weeks.†

You must have seen it in her pantomimes, you spoke of her rare gift for comedy on the stage that rouses a laughter out of the audience so dear they applaud and applaud and do not want to let her go.†1 more

Oh there are conflicts between the others too, each one human, needing, demanding, hurting, taking—but only between Emily and Susan, no, Emily toward Susan that corroding resentment.†

What did I start to gather together, to try and make coherent?†

And when is there time to remember, to sift, to weigh, to estimate, to total?†

To her overworked and exasperated teachers she was an overconscientious "slow learner" who kept trying to catch up and was absent entirely too often.†

She was too vulnerable for that terrible world of youthful competition, of preening and parading, of constant measuring of yourself against every other, of envy, "If I had that copper hair,"†

I think of our others in their three-, four-year-oldness—the explosions, the tempers, the denunciations, the demands —and I feel suddenly ill.†

Mostly Emily had asthma, and her breathing, harsh and labored, would fill the house with a curiously tranquil sound.†

Oh there are conflicts between the others too, each one human, needing, demanding, hurting, taking—but only between Emily and Susan, no, Emily toward Susan that corroding resentment.†

They never have a picture of the children so I do not know if the girls still wear those gigantic red bows and the ravaged looks on the every other Sunday when parents can come to visit "unless otherwise notified"—as we were notified the first six weeks.†

Mornings of crisis and near hysteria trying to get lunches packed, hair combed, coats and shoes found, everyone to school or Child Care on time, the baby ready for transportation.†

To her overworked and exasperated teachers she was an overconscientious "slow learner" who kept trying to catch up and was absent entirely too often.†

Now suddenly she was Somebody, and as imprisoned in her difference as she had been in her anonymity.†

She fretted about her appearance, thin and dark and foreign-looking at a time when every little girl was supposed to look or thought she should look a chubby blonde replica of Shirley Temple.†

Mostly Emily had asthma, and her breathing, harsh and labored, would fill the house with a curiously tranquil sound.†

It was the pre-relief, pre-WPA world of the depression.

She was too vulnerable for that terrible world of youthful competition, of preening and parading, of constant measuring of yourself against every other, of envy, "If I had that copper hair,"†1 more