My parents own a place way out in the sticks. A getaway ranch at the end of miles of gravel road where the live oaks and pines meet the mountains. Mount Shasta reigns up there. Not only do you get away from the pavement, you get away from most modern conveniences, air conditioning and Internet and kitchen comforts. You have to light the aging ceramic stove with matches before you can cook in the kitchen and a family of sparrows live in the stove pipe. It’s a quiet place where old barns cast shadows across the pasture, a spring supplies water to the 1920’s house, and deer and quail wander into the yard mornings and evenings. I love the place.

We spent this past weekend up there cooking and eating and washing endless dishes. Our whole family, all ten of us, plus Oma and Opa crammed into a two bedroom cottage from another century with an upstairs attic where beds line the walls. Looking out the windows you can see all the way to Oregon where wildfires smoke up the horizon. My mom “Oma” fried chicken, I mashed potatoes and cleaned the corn, and neighbors, a couple in their twenties, came to dinner with their small, serious boy in cowboy boots and his adorable sister toddling in his wake. After dinner, as we cleaned up the kitchen, the young neighbor woman remarked on the pile of dishes I’d started washing.

“Paula likes doing dishes,” my mom responded. “She has a dishwasher at home she never uses.”

“With all those kids, why don’t you use your dishwasher?” the young neighbor woman asked this really good question.

“I’m not sure,” I said, pausing in scrubbing a pot older than me. “I guess I’m just used to doing dishes.”

But the next day the conversation came back to me. Why do I wash dishes when I have a fine Bosch dishwasher installed beside my sink? I’ve never really thought about it.

.

So I thought about it.

And I came to this conclusion: doing dishes holds my family together and holds me together and holds life together.

I have all kinds of precious memories of doing dishes with people I love. They start so far back I can see myself standing on a chair beside the sink, a tiny little girl doing dishes with my great-grandpa, a tiny little widower who lived with my grandparents and washed their dishes until he got too old even for that. Sometimes he would pop out his false teeth just to freak me out, him laughing as I jumped off the chair, and raced out of the house.

At my other grandparents’ house I was not invited to help with dishes until I grew older. When I was finally handed one of Grandma Anne’s gauzy white dish towels that looked like a linen scarf and asked to stay in the warm kitchen with the womenfolk, it felt like getting my period. Grown-up conversations “for women only” made me laugh and blush and feel christened into some sacred circle as old as Eve. Tales of childbearing and husband-bearing and soul-bearing welcoming me into a woman’s world where I would soon have my own stories to share in Grandma’s kitchen.

Now, years later, I like doing dishes in my own kitchen. I like the sound the water makes whooshing out of the faucet, steam rising to the ceiling, my hands tingling from the heat. I like that through our kitchen window I can see the boys on the trampoline and playhouse swing set and our two golden labs, Buck and Nala, lying on the lawn like seals on sun-warmed sand. If the evening falls right, I can watch the sun sink into the blue-gray coast range, softening the sky and my mood. When the girls still lived at home the three of us would play worship music while washing dishes. JJ Heller was our favorite “dishes diva.” Of course, JJ doesn’t act like a diva. I’ve spoken with her on several occasions and a number of years ago interviewed her for a newspaper story and she is a godly woman, a loving wife, and the mommy of two adorable little girls who makes marvelous music with her husband. Hearing her now on the radio sometimes brings tears to my eyes because I miss those dish washing days with our daughters.

These days dish washing is largely done by Scott and me. We send the boys outside to play after supper, the older boys looking after the younger ones, and then we enjoy the peace and quiet of clanking pots and pans. It’s not romantic, but it is romantic. Sometimes we stop and kiss with suds overflowing the sink. And we talk. It’s a heck of a lot better than listening to a dishwasher swish through a scrub cycle and then paying for it when the PG&E bill comes in.

Do you have any dish washing memories? Do you love or hate doing dishes? I’d love to have you share in the comments like Ami did. Thanks!