Monday, April 16, 2018

April 16, 2018 - April

Oh, the long and lonely road of April, with its penetrating frozen rain and sleet.  December I could laugh at.  I could light it up with candles and sweeten it with dreamy confections.  January I could stand beside.  I could march through the invigorating snow, tall and sure.  I could plan out a good year.  February I could bear.  I could see its stark beauty, and although it was severely cold, its elegance was undeniable, its crisp air ever a lesson.  March I could love as the first sign of the abating of the season of death.  In March I had hope.

But April.  The season of new light and hidden joy has long since passed, a happy memory.  The new year and the promises and hope have been tucked away—not forgotten, but tucked away.  The icy severity has been conquered.  The Lord of Winter has retreated, taking his terrible army with him.  The wood fires have blazed and won the battle.  Again.  And the world is poised . . . poised.

But April.  Colorless and grey, stealing into the bones of all living creatures, sapping the strength of all it touches.  The continual shiver of exhausted muscles.  The lackluster landscape, sad and forlorn.  It cannot live and it cannot die.  An eternal cold limbo with bony fingers reaching from the Underworld.  And not even a grave!  Even that would bring some sort of solace, some sort of meaning, implying that at one time there may have been more, demanding grief for what might have been.  But even that has been stolen.

Stolen.  Relentlessly, hopelessly, helplessly, endlessly.  April.

Sunday, April 15, 2018

April 15, 2018 - The Kitchen Alchemist

I grew up washing dishes by hand.  The idea of a dishwasher never even entered my mind.  We always washed dishes by hand, and everyone I knew did the same.  It was a chore—usually despised—that simply had to be done at least twice a day every day.  Paper plates never entered the picture.  If they could be gotten, they were far too expensive anyhow.  And what a waste!  One use and tossed into the garbage?  Unheard of.  Absolutely unheard of.

And so day in and day out, we all washed our dishes.  Some of us complained louder than others, and I was one of the complainers.  Oh, how I hated washing dishes!  Surely, there were a dozen other better and more important things I could be doing than washing dishes.  Surely, there were more pressing matters at hand, things of an urgent nature.  Putting these things on hold simply to do dishes was irresponsible, I would say—to anyone who would listen.  But mostly I just grumbled angrily to myself.

Vintage Corning Ware.
Well, time passed as it always does, and one day I got myself a dishwasher—a real dishwasher!  I was so happy, I was beside myself!  I loaded it up with dirty dishes, put in the soap, turned the dial, and the pressed the button.  And the magic began.  A machine washed my dishes for me.  Finally, I thought, my dreams had come true.  No more drudgery with the dishes.  No more toiling over the sink.  I could bake whatever I wanted and not have to worry much about the cleanup.  This was progress.

Or so I thought.  Many years passed, and I went through several dishwashers.  As soon as one broke, I immediately got another because there was no way I was going to wash dishes by hand.  I had better things to do.  Funny thing is, though, I didn’t often do any of those “better” things.  I often relaxed.  Of course, there’s nothing wrong with sitting down and relaxing, especially if you have worked hard all day, but all those “important and urgent” things seemed to fly right out of the window.  I didn’t find myself getting anything more done than I ordinarily already did.

And there was a strange dark side.  The dishwasher had become a hiding place.  Anything unclean was hidden inside it, to be washed at the end of the day (unless I had to run it twice, which sometimes I did).  It made my kitchen appear cleaner than it actually was.  The counters and sink were clean because the dirt was hidden.  If I wanted to use a certain bowl or dish that was dirty, I had to use something else or improvise.  Because once something was stuffed into the hiding place, I could no longer acknowledge it existed until the machine cleaned it again.  A day’s worth of dishes would slowly build up, moldering in the dark and closed space.  In the back of my mind, there was always this feeling of unfinished business.

Then one day something changed.  I walked into my kitchen, and I realized it wasn’t just a place where I did work or fed a crew.  It was a place where I lived, where I spent a great deal of time, where I pondered life.  It was a place where I made plans, calculated the good and bad in my life, built a future.  It was a place where I laughed and cried, a place where I nourished myself and others.  It was a place filled with so much love and living.  How could I have ever thought that it was a place of drudgery?  How could I have been so blind?

What I did then, well, I pulled out the old dish rack and set it up on the counter.  Underneath it I placed a clean white vintage kitchen towel.  I pulled all the dirty dishes out of the dishwasher and put them in the sink, and then I filled up the basin with hot, soapy water.  I washed all the dishes by hand, rinsed them, and put them in the rack.  Then I stood back and watched them gleam in the sunshine that came through the window over the sink.  I did the same thing the next day and the day after that.

I’ve never put a single dish in that dishwasher again.  It sits in my kitchen.  Empty.  Barren.  And somehow my life is fuller now that I’ve been given my chores back, now that I’ve willingly taken them on again.  I do my best thinking while I’m washing dishes, and I might as well confess that I talk out loud to myself all the time while working in the kitchen.  I make plans.  I solve problems.  I come to peace with people and things.  Somehow washing the dirt off the dishes also washes it out of my mind.  Making things clean and orderly—and having nothing dirty and hidden—makes it so much easier to make realistic everyday decisions, and I find I don’t second-guess myself as much as I used to.

Who would have thought that washing dishes could do all of that?  If someone had told me so when I was younger, I would have laughed in their face and rolled my eyes.  I guess I had to learn the value—the deep and abiding value—of ordinary daily chores.  I had to learn to choose them.  I had to learn how to appreciate the meaning of simple things.  I had to learn the wisdom of a structured day. 

I don’t know why I changed and I don’t know how, and I’m not sure it matters.  Very often these days, I find myself singing while washing dishes, and that is good enough for me.