“Why are you always doing dishes,” my granddaughter asks.
- Because they’re there.
- Because if I don’t, who will?
- Because I was blessed with the responsibility gene?
- Because by now–decades into my dish washing career–it’s pretty much a knee-jerk response.
- Because warm soapy water comforts.
- Because doing dishes clears a space for “what’s next.”
- Because moments at the sink force a pause, and sometimes I need that pause.
- Because doing dishes restores the emotional capital I’ve spent on being social.
- Because engaging my hands in something mundane unlocks my imagination.
- Because my place at the kitchen sink reminds me of my mom who died young, and God knows I need to remember . . .
She’d set a kitchen chair on the drying side of the sink for me to stand on, and hand me a towel.
I didn’t mind drying the big dinner plates, but I hated drying the silverware. There was just so much of the unruly stuff, and its metal-on-metal clatter assaulted my ears. Sometimes she’d dry the silverware herself before she’d call me from my play to do the plates. Somehow she knew.
View from the sink
Our brick ranch house was situated on the center of a half-acre lot with a very generous backyard. The window just above the kitchen sink looked out on the grass that my dad kept beautifully groomed. The well-trimmed yard rolled all the way back to our vegetable garden. Some years my dad planted green beans, peppers, sweet corn, cucumbers, carrots or beets; but every year, he put in tomatoes.
One evening as my mother washed dishes and I dried, she glanced up, paused, and honed in on something out that window.
After a moment, she said with surprise, “Well, look at that . . . there’s a tomato worm in the middle of the yard!”
My mother could see a worm thirty feet away—was this a joke?
No, she did see it. The pale green worm was huge—four inches long or more and maybe three quarters of an inch in diameter.
She just happened to catch its movement in the grass. I saw it too. It was the first of several of the monsters that we saw that summer. But here’s the wonder of the tomato worm story . . .
The mystery of memory
My mother and I had washed dishes together for five or six years before she became ill and took a forced permanent leave from housework to embrace a new battle.
You’d think I’d remember conversations we shared at that sink, because I do recall she liked a good conversation. You’d think I’d remember her laughter, because I recall other situations where she laughed deeply. You’d think I’d remember something of a mother’s wisdom, or advice passed on to a daughter . . . or dreams, or imaginings, or wishes . . . or observations about the day, or life or growing up . . . or words about relationships or work that makes your heart sing, or bits of poetry that inspire . . . she liked poetry.
No. What I remember is the tomato worm.
Morris Sampler 