Birthday Dishes

     There were 5 Oxi-Clean Brillo pads floating in the water filling my stainless steal sink this morning.  My pot roast crusted, cast-iron Dutch oven was in the middle, like an old war ship.  The pot is bright blue and so was the water due to the soap built into the pads.  As I fished out the steel wool floaters, blue slime oozed out of them as I squeezed them out.

     The large cooking vessel, actually, was pretty darn clean.  My only summation of why this boat was in my sea of a sink was that it was surrounded by water when the dishwasher ran the night before. Water must have been pumped up, inadvertently, with the yucky food water from the disposal.  My dishwasher likes a clean disposal when it’s in use. Otherwise, I end up with a nasty sink full of food scraps.

      Examining the dishwasher contents added more clues to the soggy mystery.  It was crammed with dishes of all sorts, in no manner of order.  The night before, I rescued a complete piece of buttered toast from its underside just moments before my daughter was going to hit the power button. 

     “Thank you so much, Sweetie.  This toast won’t make it, though. The dishwasher will just disintegrate it and push stuff all over the dishes.  It has to be placed in the garbage,” I gently told my daughter.

     “Oh, O.K………Look Mommy! I did all the dishes by myself!  This pot was really hard, but I did it!  Happy Birthday!” Grace said with such pride of her accomplishment.

     I failed to notice the Brillo pads in the sink with the “clean pot” earlier. I suppose I would have rescued them from their soggy fate yet to come.  A little Cascade and the Heavy Cycle later, I should have a sweet load of birthday dishes to greet me in the morning.  Rearranging the dishes in front of Grace, I believe, would have hurt her feelings.

 She gave me a birthday present, in her own cashless, 10-year old way.  I just turned on the appliance and said, “Thank you so much!  You did a great job with those nasty dinner dishes. Now, I can get ready for bed! Yeah!”

     Any mother knows that washing dishes at the end of the family meal is silently assigned to her.  Women’s lib and feminism did not rescue us from feeling responsible for this task.  My kids share the duty among them when asked, but the supervisory position is pretty much mine.  Ben, bless his soul (I know, wipe the tears from my cheek), pitches in all the time.  The passive-aggressive leftovers, I mean, likelihood that the kitchen not being completely clean is sort of an honored tradition.  What use would I be if everyone does everything perfectly? (That is clearly a joke.)

     Not to worry, my usefulness in life is not determined by the cleanliness of MY kitchen. Sort of. Well, I tend to use it as a thermometer of the whole house.  I read a life-changing book years ago when I was on the “organization book phase” of my adulthood.  (As opposed to the “maybe we should get a dog phase” and the all important “I am going to try and be really good and spiritual book phase”) Marla Ciley calls it Sink Reflections.  It was the only book that ever addressed the internal issues surrounding my difficulty in getting the whole darn house in order and clean.

     A few things that I can actually remember verbatim from the book are the following: “As the kitchen goes, so the rest of the house goes. If the kitchen is a mess, so will the whole house.  If it is clean, the whole house feels clean.” Notice, it doesn’t say IS clean.  The object is to start SOMEWHERE.  She even minimizes it to just the kitchen sink to start.  “Any housework done, even imperfectly, blesses the whole family,” she claims.  I agree whole-heartedly.

     I had to recognize that even little small efforts to do something valuable to keep the house clean, affects everyone.  Grace’s attempt at doing the dishes, still blessed everyone.  I had clean glasses and spoons for breakfast this morning!  Maybe they were in the bottom of the dishwasher, but hey, they still can spoon sugar into coffee after they are rinsed off. Right? You betcha. 

     I have to constantly tell myself that I don’t have to do the whole enchilada of everything all the time for it to be valuable.  Any effort I put forth matters.  The work done will still be a blessing to those I love. 

     I would like to think that God feels the same way about our efforts to be good and holy.  Any effort, even small amount, toward bettering ourselves to be in His grace is blessed.  Do I think His love is proportionate to how much we accomplish or do in His name? No. I don’t.  I don’t love Grace any less because she almost ran a piece of toast through the Heavy Cycle of the dishwasher. I certainly don’t love her less for leaving the remains of her pot-scrubbing adventure in the sink.  What about forgetting to run the disposal?

     Not running the garbage disposal does not rank as one of the most offensive character flaws.  Not trying to wish someone you love a Happy Birthday? Now, I wish it had added on the tablets for Moses. “Thou shalt remember, recognize and celebrate your Mother’s birthday without fail or neglect.” Amen.

     Grace gave me Birthday Dishes instead of wishes.  The murky, blue slimy water in the sink reminds me that she tried, really hard, to do something extraordinary.  She gave it her best, five Brillo pads strong, to show her caring and love for me. As they air dry in a row on my windowsill, it gives me a silly smile on my face.