What Keeps Me Zen: Washing Dishes

When I was a kid, a really little one, I wanted so badly to be tall enough to reach over the faux butcher-block laminate counter and into the kitchen sink (see? really little) just so that I could do the dishes and, therefore, be a mommy. That was the dream. The very early dream.


Though it would've been lovely to bypass the labor and delivery thing, by number of dishes done alone I'm sure I could be initiated into the mommy club. My dishes are on parade, like in Beauty and the Beast, except they're not getting washed. Just marching, dirty one by nasty one, into the sink, where they pile up and wait for me.

Image: disneyscreencaps.com

And I wait. I procrastinate, usually, when it comes to dishes, but an article about the zen in doing the dishes has encouraged me to embrace the chore. There IS something zen about the white noise of running water, the scent of the favorite dish soap I picked out as a little treat to myself (sad, but true, that this amounts to a treat in motherhood). Something zen about the fact that the phone absolutely cannot be near me, that I'm accomplishing something, that I'm getting the kitchen back to a clean state, in which I can cook anything.

Even if I don't cook everything.

Even if I'm scrubbing a 13x9 charred with the remains of failed French fries. (I totally sliced up a potato, popped it in the oven and called it a French fry. I even *almost* photographed it before it went in the oven, thinking, "oh yeah, this is going to be delicious." Nope.)

I scrub and stare at the yellowing leaves on the almost-ancient maple outside my kitchen window.

Even if I'm washing all of the clean pots and pans that have been sitting idle in the cupboard, on the chance that they were pooped on by the little mouse who took residence, and ultimately met his end, in the kitchen this week.

I know I'm not the only one who does her best thinking over a sink full of suds—the challenge is getting started. Finding the motivation to begin the task. Ultimately, though, I can't tell you how many blog posts could start with, "So I was washing the dishes, and thinking…"

I wish I could tell really-little me to slow down, that motherhood will come eventually, to enjoy the days of not being able to see over the sink. But I'll settle for telling my daughter.