It’s always a gift when you find a way to see something with new eyes.

Dirty Dishes
“My life will always have dirty dishes.
If this sink can become
a place of contemplation
let me learn constancy here…”
— Gunilla Norris, Being Home

The above is an excerpt from a meditation by Gunilla Norris in her 1991 book Being Home.  I bought the book years ago in my search for a way to be at peace with the myriad of endlessly repetitive and menial tasks that are a fact of life when tending a home with young children. I loved the children part, but not so much the housework.

Jumble    ©2016 Elizabeth Fram

It’s a soothing little book with lovely black and white photographs by Greta D. Sibley. In fact, I think those photos did more to help me reframe my perspective on daily chores than the meditations. Well, in all honesty I’m not sure I’ve ever been able to achieve a better attitude about housework, but Sibley’s images absolutely contributed to the way I observe the details of the ordinary.

String of Circles    ©2016 Elizabeth Fram

There is a wonderful irony in the fact that the piles of dishes that had no redeeming qualities 25 years ago have indeed evolved into a source of contemplation. They now assume another mantle, that of a place of study — of shape, value, pattern and composition — a place “to be“, as Norris says in her introduction, “in the extraordinary beauty of dailiness”.

Sink    ©2016 Elizabeth Fram

And she was right, my life will always have dirty dishes. But at least now I can also see them as the basis of a new still life that awaits me every day.