A Beautiful Sink Full of Dishes
I’ve hit a point in my life where a sink full of dirty dishes is a real treat. If the dishwasher needs to be unstacked first? Even better. It’s a simple set of actions—everything has a place, there is a start, an end, a predictable assembly line of making the dirty clean, the reward of a shining sink and a little ticked box of accomplishment. What could be more beautiful?
My dad, a busy real estate executive in the 80s used to wax poetic about weekend mowing 13 acres. He had an old school farm tractor named Big Red, and often strapped a kid to his back or let us ride on his lap. He said, “What you still have to do is laid out in front of you—turn around and see what you’ve accomplished directly behind you. It’s instant gratification; perfectly simple.”
Right now, life feels overwhelming and complicated. I can’t think of a single friend who isn’t seriously struggling in some critical area of their family, work, social life or health. My small town is undergoing a painful, ideological identity crisis which threatens the fabric of connection, pitting the values, livelihoods and well-being of so many good people against each other. My kids are reeling from a few years of pandemic disruptions in everything from sports to future dreams to their health. In the midst of all this, my horse colicked, Finn tore his CCL, our cat got hit by a car and my wisdom teeth decided to make a very delayed appearance. Crises popping up like so many carnival whack-a-moles, where my ability to be optimistic and nimble feels like more of a requirement than a choice.
This is all to say nothing of turmoil in Ukraine, the price of milk and gas creeping ever higher, and crypto farms—imaginary money—threatening to undo all the climate change gains and end life as we know it.
Foreplay these days in the Hoffstead looks like hours browsing acreage with room for a few grapevines and enough space between us and the hordes that it will take them a relatively long time to find and kill us for our artisan homemade goat cheese.
It’s going to be okay. In the interim, a beautiful sink full of dishes presents itself to me at least once a day, and I roll up my sleeves and dive in—a clear start and end, a simple and complete task. A sigh as I dry my hands on my jeans and step away to tackle bigger problems.