it’s not heavy if you don’t pick it up

As soon as my kids were old enough to reach the sink, they took turns at the dishes. Because they’re all so close in age, three in three years, and in size, the youngest is the tallest, the kids-doing-the-dishes started at the same time for all of them, along with riding in the front seat. I grew so tired of the “it’s not fair, we had leftovers when it was her turn,” and always trying to remember whose turn it was to sit in the front seat, I devised a month long rotation. For an entire month, it was one child’s turn to sit in the front seat and it was the same child’s turn to do the dishes after dinner. It always worked out that you never had dishes for the month of your birthday. For the ten years of this rotation, at least once a week, someone would try to sweet-talk/ manipulate me into helping them with the dishes because they had “too much homework.” Every time, my husband, Vince, would say, “it only takes five minutes,” and never let them off the hook.

Until the oldest left for college. The other two were not interested at all in picking up her vacated months and the carrot of sitting in the front seat had long lost its appeal. They were always in the front seat of their own cars by then, driving themselves to school, work, and practice. Because all of us worked and I did all the meal planning, shopping, and cooking, I decided Vince could pick up Emilie's vacated dish duty because that would keep the chore duties more in balance and after all, it only takes five minutes. Vince and I felt the whiplash of them all leaving for college in the span of three years in many ways, and it was a huge adjustment to go from a fast-paced household of five with three active high school aged kids to just the two of us with three away at college. But, one clear representation of their absence each night was the now on average forty-five minute job for Vince of doing the dishes for our family of two. Vince is a capable, intelligent man who runs his own successful business. But he cannot do the dishes in under 30 minutes, and that’s if the dishwasher is empty. Let the dishwasher be full of clean dishes, and he’ll be there for an hour. And now when our kids with their spouses are home for dinner so there are seven of us, he can be there all night with consistent reminders from each of them that it only takes five minutes. 

            You might be thinking, “he may be slow, but I bet he’s thorough.” That would be kind and very generous of you, but you’d be categorically wrong. He’s terrible at it, even with twelve years practice. There is always a little stack of different dishes left on the counter each time he unloads the dishwasher because he has no idea where those could possibly go. And those he does put away are never in the same spot, let alone the correct spot. He consistently puts plastic on the bottom of the dishwasher and can fit no more than four bowls, three plates and a single pan before it’s full. And it is full with the way he arranges them. For a good six months - realistically more like six years - I tried to partner with him on the dishes, showing him how to load the dishwasher, explaining why the plastic needs to go on the top and how the racks change configurations so you can fit more in, save water, save the earth. I tried every justification for doing a better job. For applying the intellect and diligence I know he has and applies to every other area of his life. With the calm he’s characterized by, he said, “my suggestion box is full.” It was getting hard on our marriage. Now, or I should say, finally, after dinner, I clear my plate to the sink, and read something, play wordle or spelling bee, or go outside with the dog. Because this isn’t heavy if I don’t pick it up. But for me, it may as well be the damn car when I do pick it up. And truly, this isn’t something I must pick up, so I’ve come to learn, in part by watching him graciously - for a quarter and a dime’s worth of years - walk by the burdens I lay in his path that he almost always gingerly steps over each day.

            Our oldest daughter, Emilie has just recently moved to Baltimore. It’s the first place of three since college she’s lived we can actually visit (the rest have been conflict zones or otherwise unavailable for hosting guests.) She spent a year volunteering in Malawi to help with setting up a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) in a hospital. She worked for Doctors without Borders in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in an active conflict zone providing medical care to refugees and soldiers alike. She enrolled in graduate school for a Master’s in Public Health in London during the pandemic. In between, she’s worked in Seattle as a NICU or Pediatric Intensive Care nurse. She volunteers for the International Refugee Committee, for Young Women Empowered, she’s put on a soccer camp for refugee kiddos ages 5-10, she spent a year driving 40 minutes each way to tutor a young re-settled refugee boy whose family was no longer safe after helping US Soldiers in their home country. She sees and feels the needs of those around her in her heart and soul and then takes action with all of her gifts and resources. She now works on a research team at Johns Hopkins University striving to improve maternal and child health and survival rates in conflict zones in three sub-Saharan African countries, thus our trip to Baltimore. To talk to her is to hear her learning, in real time, what to pick up and what to leave for others to carry. To talk with her is to hear her deepest desire for all of us, and by us she means every member of humanity, to work together to create a world where women are equal to men, each race is equal to every other race, the inevitable indignities of life are carried by all of us such that every person can thrive.

            On our recent visit to her new home in Baltimore, we visited the American Visionary Museum and the Abundance exhibit. It displayed the wealth of the human spirit amidst depravity. There was a whole room dedicated to the cross-stitch of Esther Nisenthal Krinitz, a Polish Jew, who took one of her sisters and left their farm before being rounded up and sent to a concentration camp. They hid in plain sight for three years while none of her family members survived. She stitched her family’s story before, during, and after the horror. It’s infused with hope and resilience.

            There is a display honoring Master Sergeant Roddie Edmonds whose men were captured and held in Stalag IXA POW camp after the Battle of the Bulge and under threat of being shot if he didn’t identify the Jewish soldiers in his battalion said, “you’ll just have to shoot us all” and in so doing, saved 200 Jewish American soldiers from the Nazi’s murderous hate.

            There is the metal work of a young African American man who was severely injured in a mill accident and left unable to walk. After years of not being able to do anything, he started bending and welding scraps into magnificent art.

            There is a display of calls to take up burdens that are heavy – still too heavy and must be carried by all of us until they are but feathers carried away on a warm summer breeze. For these, our suggestion box cannot be full. We must all work together to honor the humanity and image of God reflected in each and every beautiful soul.

“This country will not be a good place for any of us to live unless we make it a good place for all of us to live in.” Theodore Roosevelt 

“I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” Elie Wiesel 

“The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty of bad people but the silence over that by the good people.” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 

“When you see something that is not right. Not Fair. Not Just. You have to speak up. You have to say something. You have to do something.” John Lewis 

“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, because love comes more naturally to the human than its opposite.” Nelson Mandella 

 “Be the reason someone smiles. Be the reason someone feels loved and believes in the goodness of people.” Roy T. Bennett 

“Evil begins when you treat people as things.” Terry Pratchett 

On the surface, each of these displays is a personal story of depravity of one kind of another. Yet, the irony is the entire collection is titled, “Abundance.” It seems that when much is stripped away, that which is most important becomes clear and within the human heart there is an abundant capacity to love and overcome and sacrifice, if we will only lay down and leave down that which should never have been picked up to begin with and take up that which is most crucial in a shared burden. Because some things are so heavy that we must lift with our legs and carry them together. “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” John 15:13