When we first
moved to San Antonio in the 1960s, the biggest draw of excitement for the new
house came from the dishwasher. The luxury of simply rinsing the dishes, pots
and pans and then placing them into a machine that washed them seemed decadent
to us. I don’t remember anyone complaining about doing the dishes during those
first years that we had a machine.
This little dishwasher
toiled away for ten years before its motor burned out. My father’s comment when
he realized the expense for replacement? “I have three dishwashers in this
house. We don’t need another.”
Resentfully, the women in the household took over
the machine’s duties. My sister usually cleared the table, putting any
leftovers into neat Tupperware containers and stacking the dishes in a manageable
pile. I manned the sink of hot sudsy water. As Paula brought dishes to me, I’d
quickly submerge them, scour them clean, and dip them into the second sink
filled with rinse water. I didn’t mind this chore, but I often wished the
scenery I viewed wasn’t the dining room table. I swore that if I even owned a
home, I’d have a kitchen sink with a window that overlooked the yard. No one
listened to my grumbles as I scrubbed. My mother just calmly dried each plate
and restacked them neatly so my sister could put them away. I may have
complained a little more when it came
to doing the pots and pans, but with my SOS Brillo pad in hand no job proved
insurmountable.
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| Me and my window! |
When I left home for college and my first
apartment, I thrilled in having a dishwasher again. Only I barely used it at
first because I lived alone. If I didn’t want ants or roaches invading my
place, I couldn’t leave dirty dishes in the sink. If I had to rinse the dishes
enough to keep the insects away, then I figured I should just wash them by
hand. I didn’t begin to rely upon a dishwasher until I roomed with three other
women. We constructed a simple rule. If you cooked, you didn’t clean. Three of
us cooked on a rotation. One roommate never touched the stove, so she always
did some kind of clean-up, but she never complained.
Eventually, my apartment living gave way to home
ownership. When David and I bought our house, which was built in 1966, it had a
portable dishwasher. The little butcher block model sat on one wall across from
the sink. You had to roll it over to the sink and attach a hose to the faucet.
Needless to say, it leaked. We rarely used it, but it didn’t matter.
The sink in this kitchen overlooks a huge back
yard filled with trees. I could finally stand on the inside, hands submerged in
heat and suds, and watch butterflies and hummingbirds. We lived in our current
home seven years before we remodeled the kitchen and added a dishwasher. I didn’t
shift back to automation as easily as you’d think. By this time, I had several
sets of dishes and glasses that I didn’t want to run through a machine. I still
preferred to clean pots and pans by hand. When this machine eventually died, we
didn’t rush for a replacement. Eventually, the pace of our daily routine converted
dishes into another dreaded chore, and my complaints lead my husband and son to
search for a perfect replacement.
Every day, though, I still stand at the sink and
gaze out into my gardens. I’ll load most of the dishes into the machine, but
hand wash a set of plastic tumblers I bought at Target for under $2.00 a piece!
These smoky goblets bore the instructions—hand wash to keep glass appearance.
As they look so much like glass that you don’t believe they’re plastic unless
you touch them, I figure I’ll spend a little time each day with hands submerged
and eyes gazing into the backyard.
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| Puppy Koi "helping" with the dishes |
Copyright 2012 Elizabeth Abrams Chapman
