Dish Reflections

For those of you interested in what I'm actually doing with my life I will kindly inform you that I do not have a job, as of yet, but i have become the official dishwasher. (I'm quite good at it too, I'll have you know.)

Every evening after dinner I plug up the sink and let it fill with warm water. Filling in the space around the small stack of dishes already resting in its depths. Hot water is out of the question, I may have taken the time to train my tongue to withstand temperatures of near boiling while going through my hot apple cider craze, my poor delicate hands did not receive such training. Therefore certain concessions must be made.

As there are only three of us, I can usually wash all of the dishes from an entire day of meals in about half an hour, give or take. And while I may not have yet moved from warm water to hot i have become very adept at precariously piling the clean dishes in the drainer.

Standing there at the sink, gazing at the blackness out the window (as we tend to eat dinner rather late), I am reminded of a story my Mom told me about Grandma doing dishes and looking out that window. My Grandparents house is shaped like an L. The kitchen window on the ground floor on one side and my Mom's childhood bed room on the floor above across the way.

I apparently inherited my propensity to stay up late reading from my Mom. She would be up in her room with the lamp on when she should be sleeping, reading and listening frantically for footsteps across the floor to the base of the stairs. She was so careful to quickly turn out the light whenever she heard a hint of a footfall. Yet Grandma would still yell from the bottom of the stairs for her to turn her light off. Mom could not figure out how Grandma knew she had been reading when she had been sure to turn the light off before Grandma reached the base of the stairs where she could have seen it.

In actuality, Grandma had just seen the light through the window from the kitchen and walked over to the stairs so she wouldn't have to shout as loud. Mom says it took her quite a long time to figure out how Grandma always knew she was reading in bed.

The other day I was tempted to run upstairs in the middle of my dish washing and turn on the light in my Mom's old bedroom, just so I could see it from the kitchen window, but not quite tempted enough to dry off my sudsy hands and make the trip.

Grandma told me another funny thing about washing dishes a couple of days ago. She said that when they moved into that house they had fixed up the kitchen so that there was space for a dishwasher. They actually had to cut out part of the counter so one would fit. Grandma was adamant that she was not going to raise a household of kids without a dishwasher. As it turned out, Grandma and Grandpa didn't get their dishwasher until all of their kids had gone off and gotten married, and it's like pulling teeth to get Grandma to actually use it. (Not that she needs to, she has me now.)

I also find that all of these lovely dishes give me the wonderful opportunity to reflect on what to write about in my next blog post. So you can blame the dishes for my ramblings.