Thread by @ConnieSchultz

1/ Title this, Why I Use a Dish Rack

For years, a close friend has teased me about the dish rack in my kitchen.

“Why, Con?” she wants to know.

Her list is the perfect closing argument:

2/ I have a dishwasher. Many of our dishes are durable enough to go into that dishwasher at the end of their workday. When I use china, the dish rack can leave its home from under the sink, briefly. No need for it to take up valuable counter space as a permanent resident.

3/ Solid reasoning. To which I say, “Please pass the Dawn.”

The pandemic, which slowed my daily pace to a crawl, has helped me understand this about myself: This is my thinking place.

4/ Columns and essays are built here, one paragraph at a time. Entire chapters of my first novel found their beginnings here, when I sank plates into the suds and remembered yet another thing about life in the 1950s…the 1960s…the ‘70s.

5/ Ellie’s life changed the day I looked out the window and saw a pair of cardinal parents on the platform feeder. She would do everything she could to save her marriage, no matter how many friends (and later readers) thought Brick did not deserve her.

6/ That bird feeder hangs from the tree planted for grandchild Clayton. We’ve planted one for each grandchild. Clayton will always be our first and apparently it never hurts to remind a person of such a thing, particularly right after he has turned 13.

7/ Sometimes, I fill the dishwashing time by looking at each framed photo of our grandchildren and tell them stories about their lives, so far. Memory practice, I assure myself.

8/ In September, I started describing to my grandchildren in the photos what it will be like first time we’re together again. Out loud, in my Grandma voice. My way, maybe, of assuring them (and me) that I’m still here.

9/ This photo was taken at dawn, my favorite time of the morning. When I see grandson Milo, I’m going to show him how the shadow of his blue star creates another star on our kitchen cabinet.

10/ My son Andy made the wooden collage in the upper right, at age eight. When he saw it up there his first words were, “I can’t believe you still have that.” He used his man’s voice, but he was smiling.

11/ My daughter made the Caitlin💜Mom wedge of wood when she was nine. The message on her glued popsicle sticks, to the left, reads “The Greatest Mom!” It has faded to a whisper, but I am waiting for her to trace it with an Extra Fine Point Sharpie in her 33-year-old hand.

12/ I can imagine, in that moment, three-year-old Ela asking, “Mommy, why are you doing that?” My daughter will pause to smile at her daughter and say, “Because Grandma is a mommy, too.”

13/ A calendar hangs over the dish rack, always. My schedule is on my phone calendar, but I like the artwork of calendars made by women. A different one hangs in our laundry room. It’s the first piece of art I see when I walk in from the garage.

14/ My friend Karen Sandstrom’s calendar is in my office. I love sharing her whimsical drawings with students during class. Anyone who has spent the last three semesters on Zoom likely understands the mood lift of seeing dogs happily strapped to flying balloons.

15/ The potted plant is a succulent clover. I never knew such a thing existed until I ordered one from Groovy Plants in Marengo, Ohio. Immediately after meeting the first one, I ordered four more. Each bundle of clover arrived ready to dance in the middle of winter.

16/ I chose the pot for this clover after Sherrod said it reminded him of a seam on a baseball. It makes me think of him when I look at it, especially when he’s in Washington. On January 6, I held it in my hands for a while until I knew he was safe.

17/ Soon, those pots will be filled with wildflowers from my garden. Little promises on my windowsill. The red car was a gift from my son on my third Christmas as a single mom. “One day I will have a red car,” he heard me say, once, and so he slipped this into my stocking.

18/ The angel looking over that little red car was a gift from my friend Maxxine who read my palm more than two decades ago and said, “The love of your life is on his way, and he has curly hair.” How about that.

19/ One more thing: The bell on the right is to beckon Franklin and Walter to come in from the yard at night so that we can go to bed already. Dinging that bell works every time, as long as we remember to yell, “Treat!”

And that is the story of my dish rack.