The dishes…

Coronavirus Survivor’s Log-Day 16

Today I got to go to a very special photo shoot….of my brain…hopefully to discover the source of the leaky faucet of brain juice that drip drip drips every time I move or bend over. I have a ton of experience with CT scans and MRIs…as one does when they have a severe TBI, so they don’t scare me, but I am interested to see what this one tells us.

So today, I thought I’d go a little easy on us with a prompt and talk about a subject we are all pretty familiar with these days….the dishes. So here’s your writing prompt for the day…

Tell me about a time you washed the dishes. Write for ten minutes….GO!

I stack the plates my sister cleaned off the table and start the water. She’s already taken the time to clear out the dishwasher while we were making Christmas dinner for our family of 17. It was an impromptu feast thrown together by my sisters and I when my mother came down with cellulitis on Christmas Eve.

My sister continues to gather the dishes and I rinse them as she does. She moves to the other side of me in my mother’s tiny galley kitchen and begins to load the dishwasher. We work in silence, she and I, exhausted by the hustle and bustle creation of the traditional Christmas dinner. It was important to us to make it delicious and right and all the things that Christmas has always been. We wanted to do that for our mom.

It’s quick work, with the two of us seamlessly working as a team. We do that well together…we have learned as we’ve painted together this year…and it is a beautiful thing. I finish the dishes and watch the suds swirl down the drain. It’s all over…the cooking and the eating and the visiting…and we close the dishwasher and start it up.