The Drudgery of Onions
I pivot between the stove and the sink, chopping and frying onions with 2 of my hands and washing an impressive day-old pile of dishes with the other set of hands I have because I’m a multi-limbed Kali-esque goddess of multitasking. A fifth hand sprouting from yet another limb clings tightly to a large chip that lives rent free on my shoulder, because I’m definitely not evolved enough to kick that to the curb. What would I do without its reassuring weight of resentment? No, no, no… my old buddy Chip stays and I won’t hear anything more about it.
All my hands zip around expertly on autopilot, but my mind lingers languidly on the letter I just received from the IRS. I’m pre-emptively dreading the on-hold music I’ll have to endure for probably a minimum of 45 minutes when I phone them tomorrow morning.
From the kitchen table, dictionary in hand, my adorable, delightful and utterly useless 8 year old chirps, “Mom, tell me a word and I’ll look it up.”
“Drudgery,” I reply instantaneously. Huh. I wonder from whence that word sprang forth so quickly? It was like it was already on my tongue.
“Menial, distasteful, dull, or hard work,” she sing-songs cheerfully as I trudge over to the washing machine to transfer a 4th load into the dryer. Ugh! Why can’t the dryer door open the other way so it’s easier to transfer the clooooothes? Oh, for fucks sake, Chip, I tell the chip on my shoulder, at least you’re not walking several miles to the nearest water source to scrub your skivvies, you privileged punk. I mean, it is kind of romantic to imagine myself walking down a dusty road balancing a basket of laundry on my head. God, I look so dignified. My posture is amazing. Granted, I could never pull it off with Chip on my shoulder because he would throw my balance off completely, so I would have to become a different person- a better, stronger, more balanced and tolerant person. Mmm, that sounds hard. Although my calves would be beautifully sculpted from all that walking to and fro, the truth is I’m much more enamored by instant water and modern appliances than I am by this fantasy, which is probably an insensitive developing nation fetishization.
Recently when I asked my kid to help me out with the chores because I was completely overwhelmed, she’d replied: “Oh, mom, don’t worry about chores, we have servants for that!” I’d looked at her quizzically and she’d gestured toward the dishwasher and washing machine. “Servants!” she’d exclaimed gleefully. “See? We’re rich!”
She made an excellent point. Relative to many people on earth, we’re loaded- loaded like a Kenmore after a dinner party. But in her limited years on the planet she’d failed to grasp that it was actually the incessant laboring of her parents that formed the invisible backdrop to her blessed existence, where checks were deposited into the bank and food appeared on the table, where dishes sparkled and clothes were magically cleaned and folded. Let alone the invisible labor of a million other people behind us doing the even dirtier work of our capitalist overlords to ensure we maintain our convenient and comfortable middle class existence. Oh lord, I gotta set this kid straight, I had thought. Time to have “the talk” about late stage capitalism and implement a chore chart. And then I’d forgotten, because I’m a lazy socialist and an inconsistent disciplinarian.
In one of my favorite children’s books, there’s a humble country bunny who teaches her bunny babies to run the household efficiently so she can go off and become the Easter bunny. Being the Easter bunny is her calling, and she must heed the call. In her interview for the job, the old Grandfather bunny says, “What a large family you have, my dear. I suppose they take all of your time.” And she says, “When they were babies that was so, but now they are so well trained they do most of the work for me.” Which is an excellent argument for having a large litter of children, but it didn’t solve my problem since I had only the one, and she held a strong disdain for housework, believing it to be the onus of our appliances.
I think of our favorite server at a popular Mexican restaurant in town. Flitting quickly between tables, she’s perpetually busy but always friendly and chipper. I often overhear people comment to her on how hard she works and how cheerful she is, and she always says something back like “oh, it’s because working at the restaurant is a break from all the chores at home. Being here is way better. Trust me, I’m not smiling when I get home at night.” I get it! It’s not that I don’t like being busy and productive. Being of service gives my life meaning! I fucking love doing the dishes at someone else’s house! But one's own housework can feel burdensome to those who hold the lion’s share, those who are not natural domestic goddesses, those who live without manservants or scullery maids and feel there may be something else they’re meant to offer the world besides cleaning up after the slovenly beasts with whom they cohabitate.
Like a wave upon the shore is a chore. First one, then another, then another, and then… surprise, here’s a big one: there’s a leak under the house that’s become a flood and you can’t afford a plumber so you have to climb into the subterranean swamp that smells like stagnant ass and track down the leak and then Youtube what to do about it. And while you’re under the house underwater, here comes another nice little set of waves on the horizon of your mind- your yearly insurance audit for the business is due, right on the heels of the taxes you extended back in April! Personal AND corporate! Both due! Aren’t you glad you started your own business? All those client projects! Due due due! No one in the house has clean underwear, and everything is due! Guess what else is due? Dinner! You still have to fry those onions and feed your people a balanced bolognaise! By the way, the cat is sick and the vet would like $800 that you don’t have. Sorry. With barely an ebb to catch your breath, tasks and bills stack up one on top of the next, and you have to continually make peace with running around in the shallows trying in vain to push the waves back out to sea. Meanwhile, your calling is calling your from just behind the dunes: “Remember me? Your calling? I’m calling to you! Hi! Heed my call. It’s your calling calling! WOMAN! Why are you always pushing around waves and onions and invoices when you could be up here building glorious sandcastles for all the world to enjoy!? You coulda’ been a contender… but I guess it’s too late because your ship has saaaaaaailed…”
I don’t even know what my calling is at this point, I just sense it’s not staring vacantly into the middle distance while caramelizing onions and wondering where the time has gone.
Sometimes I think I’ve made my peace with the ceaselessness of it all- my experience is not unique, after all, nor is it even bad. I have a good life, a full life! I’d take tedium over tragedy any day. But then out of nowhere this elusive concept of a calling comes bounding toward me from a distance, like a love-starved pup who's been waiting all day for me to come home. The deluge of obligations and communications seem to function as a thick, sticky tar that keeps me glued to the porch while the vague outline of a calling stands just inside the screen door, panting and whining for me to come in and give it love.
Is my calling to make art, make money, make a difference? Is it to make meaning from the seemingly meaningless? Is it to cook up tasty metaphor soups using all the onions I’ve spent so much time caramelizing? Maybe compulsively making metaphors about my calling is my calling.
The other day amidst the menial maelstrom, the quotidian tedium, I noticed a shaft of sunlight coming through the skylight and hitting my open dishwasher. It was like a spotlight and out of nowhere that humble appliance became a thing of beauty. It had recently been unloaded (by me, of course, please hold your applause). Suddenly that empty dishwasher reminded me of my mind in meditation- that is to say, my mind after about the first 30 minutes of sitting and reviewing to-do lists and hashing out habitual hurts. The light hitting the empty racks was the delicious shudder of God-light that moves through my body sometimes when my aches and pains recede and my thoughts tire themselves out. That illuminated dishwasher was my mind before I remembered to reload it with the dishes piling up on the periphery. In those rare sweet moments of forgetting the dishes and remembering myself as infinite emptiness and pure potentiality, all I notice is warm light flooding empty space- and it’s good.
But my dishwasher rarely sits empty, just as I rarely pause tasking to notice the spaciousness of my soul. My mind is habitually filled with crusty plates. I have moments of emptiness of course, but it’s more like the gaping void of the hungry ghost emptiness, which I fill with browsing the clearance rack at Target or mindlessly scrolling the internet.
These moments of emptiness are less about god-light piercing me with its sublime peace and more like my mind has been abducted by late-stage capitalist aliens. Like the time I filled a pot with water to make mac and cheese, and then wandered by the sink an hour later to see the pot of water still patiently waiting to be transferred to the stove. I remembered starting to make lunch for my kid, but then had apparently spent the following hour poking at my phone, which is basically the same thing as being abducted by aliens except when they erase your memory they fill it up again with ads for leggings that supposedly reduce cellulite. I don’t need to scroll the internet to go completely unconscious though. Some might even say it’s my… natural state. One time I was doing laundry and the next thing I remember I was at the kitchen sink doing dishes but I don’t remember how I got from point A to point B. I heard a loud noise coming from the laundry room and when I went to investigate I discovered a spinning washing machine, full of soapy bubbles but completely devoid of clothes. Another juicy mind metaphor that I’ll just leave there for you as a parting gift.
So it’s clear my calling is not laundry. And it’s probably also not making stock out of all these onions. Maybe it’s simply taking stock of the rare moments I am present to my life, whatever it is I’m doing, and letting it be exactly as it is. It feels a little bit like another chore, but it seems kind of important so I’m gonna pin it to the top of my to-do list.
To-Do, today:
Try to balance the broth between doing and being. Let that simmer whether consciousness shimmers in or out of focus.
Wake up to my life exactly as it is in any given moment, be it the drudgery of the onion, the inevitability of the abduction, or the grace of an illumination.