Before my head even reached above the kitchen sink, I was amazed at the heat my mother’s hands could bear. I thought the soap bubbles were actually just the water boiling. And yet, she slipped her hands in without flinching, smiling even, and laid the clean ones to the side for me to wipe with the dish towel. Still juggling the contained heat in my chubby hands, I thought she could do anything. She never proved me wrong. 

I suppose one never sees the “how they got here” — the back story. Certainly there were years of dishwashing. Being the oldest daughter, she became the youngest mother to her siblings — Grandma Elsie’s second pair of hands. And certainly it was grandma who first ran the water, ran it hot, knowing that her daughter would need to learn, and learn quickly, to face all that would lie ahead. Most of it going unsaid, but none of it going unknown. 

And so it was my mother who taught me. Well beyond the kitchen sink. How to survive. To bear the heat. Without flinch or whimper. Smiling even. 

Breakfast dishes on the counter, I laugh out into the summer sun, thinking, “What haven’t you survived?”