Love and Silverware (archive re-post)

I'm taking a little summer beak through mid-July. During this time I'll be hosting some great guest bloggers and sharing some of my favorite posts from The Word Cellar archives. The post below originally appeared on 28 April 2008 in a slightly different form under the title "Acts of Love."

** ** **

photo by dusdin (modified)

"I see all your dishes are done!"

It's a little joke my mom and I have when she comes to my house. If there are dirty dishes piled up on the counter and in the sink (as there all too often are), she kindly ignores them. But when the kitchen is spotless (or at least not a disaster zone), she says, "I see all your dishes are done!"

Without context, she sounds like one of those harpy mothers who show up in bad chick- lit novels and mediocre sitcoms. But it's not that way at all.

After several years of being a married woman and trying to "keep house," I finally had to come clean. Yes, I love a fresh, orderly space. I can even create one. I just have trouble maintaining it. I was tired of my two extreme solutions: adopting a devil-may-care attitude and pretending the mess didn't bother me; or working furiously to eliminate it before my parents, or anyone else for that matter, crossed my threshold. Finally, I simply confessed to my mom that I was embarrassed by the near constant state of disarray in my home.

What a relief to stop pretending—at least to her—that I'm some sort of domestic diva. Even though she's always kept a neat, well-organized house, my mom has never been one of those white-glove-test types. She doesn't cast disapproving looks at the stacks of magazines and junk mail that regularly commandeer my dining room table and kitchen island. Still, I want her to be proud of me. I want to show her that I've learned something from her about making a house a home.

When I finally admitted that housekeeping just isn't my forte, I felt free. Free, but still a little bit ashamed, which prompted me to point at the rows of clean dishes drying on tea towels neatly lining the countertop. "Look, all my dishes are done!" I said.

That's how the joke started. I think it’s my mom's way of giving me a pat on the back, of saying "good job" about something she knows isn't the easiest or highest priority on my list. In those moments, I'm seven-years-old again and she's praising my picture for the school art contest. I'm only in first grade, but already I suspect that drawing isn't my strength. I want to be good at it, but deep down, I'm pretty sure I'm not. But I show her my picture, and I don't care if it's the best. I just care that she loves it like she loves me.

As an adult, it's hard to know where to turn for that kind of comfort and approval. On particularly bad days, when a messy house is a physical reminder of how life sometimes feels, I long to be that first grader with the slightly buck teeth, my silky brown hair pulled back in white butterfly barrettes, and an affinity for all things Strawberry Shortcake. I want to climb into my tall bed in my yellow bedroom and hear my mom whisper-sing me to sleep: "Mommy loves her sleepy-bye girl, sleepy-bye, sleepy-bye girl."

Since becoming an adult, I constantly marvel at my mom's ability to stick to a schedule, complete a task, and focus on what needs to be done, whether it's cleaning a house or comforting a child. But I've also seen how it forces her to push herself unnecessarily when she's weary; how it makes her feel guilty if she allows things to fall below her usual high standard. She once told me, "I wish I could be more like you. You seem to be able to just let things go. I can't do that." She was referring, of course, to my "ability" to forgo vacuuming for weeks on end, to let paper pile up everywhere, to let dirty dishes stack up in the sink. As weird as that sounds, it really was a compliment on what she admired in me: my ability to put myself first sometimes, to choose fun over chores, and to say "I'll do it tomorrow" if I'm too tired to do it today.

Still, that laissez faire attitude often leaves me feeling out of control and mired in mess. One night after dinner, I loaded the dishwasher and looked at everything left on the counter. Some nights, I'll leave the big pots and pans that can't go in the machine and just wash them later, later being a day (or two or three) later. But on this night there were a bunch of extra plates and silverware, things I rarely have to wash by hand anymore. I decided to buckle down and do the dishes. Then I considered just washing the big stuff. After all, I thought, I could run the full dishwasher now and load these stragglers in later. But it seemed silly not to wash a few extra things while I was at it. So I got to work.

I rinsed half a dozen pieces of silverware—a little metal bouquet—under running water. The sound of forks, spoons, and butter knives clacking together transported me back to the kitchen of my childhood, where all dishes were washed by hand, all the time.

Back to that eat-in kitchen with the ceramic-top stove that once flew out of the wall when our neighbor's ex-wife came crashing through it in her car.

Back to the gold-speckled Formica counter tops that Great Aunt Martha insisted were much too poorly lit every Thanksgiving.

Back to the mint green vinyl chairs with swivel seats and legs on wheels. Back to dinner being served every weekday at 4:30 when Dad got home from the factory.

Back to when Monday nights meant Swiss steak and homemade mashed potatoes, and Fridays usually meant a pizza box atop the plastic tablecloth.

I looked at my hand holding that silverware and saw my mother's hand. I felt the hard curve of wet metal that she's felt thousands of times. The moment expanded so that I was my mother and she was me. The moment contracted so that all truth and love and acts of kindness were there, in that little handful of metal. I finished the dishes.

Comments

[Katie]

Beautiful. So, so well done.

[sasha]

jenna, you are truly meant to build stories with words. this is so beautiful. i think it's possible i'll never do dishes again without feeling my mother and my childhood. thank you.