Here Come the Dishes Again

Whenever I hear a song by the Eurythmics (which granted is not all that often) one very vivid always pops into my head: my dad doing the dishes. Growing up in my household we never had a dishwasher. It wasn’t until a few years ago, with both their daughters out of the house - me a few states away and my sister with her own family and home - that my parents decided to remodel their kitchen. With this remodel came a dishwasher.

My childhood, as I said though, was dishwasher-less. We took turns doing the dishes. I am almost certain that number of times my dad, my sister or I did the dishes doesn’t equal the number of times my mom stood at the kitchen sink scrubbing. For me doing the dishes was boring and always left me with chaffed hands, however for my dad it was a different activity all together. I almost always knew when my dad was doing dishes. If household conditions permitted, I’d see my dad walk over to our record player with the Eurythmics greatest hits album in hand., and then Annie Lennox would start singing about the rain coming again. There stood my dad, in the kitchen, gloves on, plates, bowls and silverware in hand, tapping his feet and signing along to the Eurythmics. There were times he did the dishes in a less flamboyant manner, but it’s the times he blasted the Eurythmics that I remember.

I now have no dishwasher to call my own. My apartment, as hard as I tried to find one, did not come with a dishwasher. So I do them the old fashioned way, with a scrub brush, some liquid soap and my hands. Yesterday after running some errands, I walked into my kitchen to do my dishes. It’s not a task I look forward to, so yesterday I spiced it up. Along with my scrub brush and liquid soap, I grabbed my iPod. I set it on shuffle and sang along and tapped my feet while scrubbing away. And then I realized, I am my father’s daughter.