Washing the Whisk

We’re in the kitchen. I’m standing in a corner fiddling with my work-issued iPhone. I look up. You, bathed in glorious morning sunlight, are at the sink, bent over, absorbed in your task, washing breakfast dishes in the fashion of dish-washing that is fully your own, involving as little water as possible and two goals: clean the dishes and utensils while keeping your hands and fingers from getting wet.

 I watch you, silent, illuminated, intent in your chore. You are entirely focused on cleaning the small metal whisk coated with the batter I whipped up earlier to give you a plate of whole-grain, blueberry pancakes.

Observing you from my corner, the illuminated-you, the occupied-you, the oblivious-to-me-and-to-anything-other-than-how-to-clean-that-whisk you, I am flooded with love, overcome with tenderness. Your wife yes, but right now, I am god, mother-god, and you are my most treasured creation. I adore you. Stupendous love from my center moves to you and envelops you.

I want this feeling to go on. I want this unexpected loving energy to continue. It fills me, comes through me, and lifts me out of my ordinary life, my making-breakfast-in-the-kitchen-life, my toying-with-my-iPhone-life. I am my best self in this moment – loving you, watching you, washing a whisk. I remember another such instance years ago when I watched from afar as you, crouched down, binoculars in hand, studied a bird, on a rock, near the sea. For a long heart-opening moment there was nothing else but me watching you, watching that bird.

Last year you had mouth cancer. You did everything you were told. You entered the battle and fought the war. It was painful and challenging. And now you are cancer-free, or maybe not. Possibly not. Probably not, since you discovered a new lump two weeks ago and I asked you just the other night, Is the lump still there and you said yes, but refused to do anything about it before your already-scheduled cancer check-up next week.

Your cancer changed my life. Shook my foundation – is helping purge me of pettiness and my need to control. I only want to be with you – make you blueberry pancakes and watch you wash dishes in the sunlight at the sink, trying not to wet your fingers as you puzzle over the job at hand, how to get dried-up batter out of the prongs of the whisk.