In almost every respect, today was a normal day.
I peeled carrots. Packed my lunch. Listened to Jackie Hill Perry as I drove to Fremont.
I did a workout at the basketball court above the North Seattle transfer station, arrived at the bakery, checked in with people, opened my laptop, deleted emails.
I looked at my list from yesterday. Sharpie boxes scrawled on half-sheets of recycled paper.
My list was dwindling. But, the secret lists laying hidden around me lurked in periphery.
The bakery is full of hidden lists. You can feel the ghosts of tasks on every corner you turn here. Sometimes they haunt you, daunting volumes of work to be accomplished. Other times, you stare them in the face and laugh as you pass by; you have more urgent matters to attend to.
Today, this list in front of me was coming to an end. The whispers of unfinished tasks echoed around me, and though numerous, but faintly. Much more faintly than before.
For today, I take my leave of them.
I washed dishes from 9:20 to 9:45 am.
I get to wash dishes at my job.
Sheet trays with cinnamon sugar melted into corners. Cambros covered in bran muffin batter. Bus bins encrusted with dough. Pullman pans sprayed with oil and blackened from bake after bake.
All these made clean. Redeemed from their grease and grime. Rinsed with searing hot water and dunked into sanitizer.
All these made ready for another few hours of work.
And I, I redeem them. I bring them back from the pit. Under my hands, these vessels, rejected, become assets, coveted. No longer: a chore looming ahead; they are transformed: a tool laying in wait. Carefully stored on the metro , they await their next fate.
I washed the dishes. A most pleasurable Tetris to solve. These in the dishwasher, these into the drink. A game, a hustle. It’s me vs the sink.
There is nothing quite so normal as washing the dishes at the bakery. Relentlessly satisfying (even when exhausting or painful) because it is a puzzle eminently solvable. When so many problems feel complex and unwieldy, the dishes offer you simplicity, methodology, chronology.
Nothing will be methodical now.
This day was normal, but the next is not. Nor the next. Nor the next after that.
I am leaving the bakery.
For five months.
Hidden lists won’t haunt me. And dishes won’t want me.
Rest assured. I will want the dishes.
