Who Does the Dishes?
The neighbors who moved in next door reminded me of me. Back when I was 30. Except that my dream of
living in the woods and having fat, happy babies hadn’t come true, yet. At 30 I was in New York City, with my
long-haired guitar playing boyfriend from North Carolina. I was a dancer. We were artists.
My armpits and legs were not shaven. We were vegetarians eating organic foods, no matter how empty out
bank account. The back-to-the land, I’m not going to buy into the material world credo hadn’t worn thin. My
feet were shod in ergonomically correct sandals and sneakers. The dark eye liner and ruby red lipstick I
wore as a performer were only just beginning to make a permanent mark on my face. The changes had
begun.
Two decades later in Northern California, after years of those city streets and city ways, I was trying to
remember myself. Living in New York had been like living on a distant planet, loosely tethered to my values,
as points of view vacillated like trends in art. The woods were now my home. I had a husband of four years.
We had just celebrated the first anniversary of living with a seven year old boy. A son. He was ours.
Our new neighbors were remarkable, actually. Their daughter was a fat, happy three year old. Their family
had recently expanded. The young wife’s niece and nephew, aged 6 and 3, had come to live with them. I was
amazed.
One morning, over kids and coffee, I noticed a small wooden contraption on her counter: A thick, wooden
dowel with thinner sticks sticking up and out diagonally from it, with plastic bags hanging from them. The
bags were airing out in order to be used again. Recycle. Reuse.
For years, inside-out plastic bags from the produce section had hung stuck on my refrigerator to dry. For
years I diligently washed, dried and reused these bags. They came to the store with me, packed inside
string bags scrunched up in my back pack, in case I decided to go shopping. I remember haggling with shop
owners in Chinatown, who could not understand that I had my own bag, insisiting their wares go home in
one of those horrible, red plastic kind, whose handles cut lines into your fingers as you schelped up the
subway stairs.
“I need one of those dryer thingies,” I told my neighbor, “as we speak, I have 2 or 3 bags drying next to the
faucet by the kitchen sink. Such an endeavor in uselessness. Do you think I remember to reuse them? Half
the time I even forget to take my big canvas Co-op bag when I shop at the Co-op. And if you have a partner
who recycling isn’t that important to, it’s an even bigger pain. So, I have a plastic bag graveyard, along with
other graveyards of stuff I can’t recycle and feel guilty about throwing into the trash. It’s quite an acquired
neurosis.”
At home that evening, I remembered something I’d read in the early eighties, when I lived in Berkeley. Back
then it seemed as though all the books I read were written by women who lived in Berkeley. The memory
was from a book of essays by Susan Griffin, the incredible writer of, Women and Nature, The Roaring Inside
Her, a book, that should be part of every American high school science and history curriculum.
In this essay, Griffin had written a complaint about recycling. She mentioned having to wash out the cans
and keep them somewhere around the house until recycling day, when the tin and other recyclable refuse
would be put out with the other garbage. In Berkeley curbside recycling was a city amenity.
In other places, like where I reside, we haul our recyclables to a recycling station. As I was leaving Brooklyn
four years ago, billionaire Mayor Bloomberg proposed to stop curbside recycling as a means to save the city
money. Pray tell, how are New Yorkers going to haul their recyclables to a center? And where in God’s
name is the extra garbage going to go if that small nation-state does not recycle?
Griffin went on to point out that it would be mainly women who would be doing all this extra work of cleaning
up and saving the planet. She resented this added burden. I didn’t get it at all. She was a single mother
with a young child. I was in my early twenties and I was liberated. My partner and I shared the domestic
duties. My boyfriend was actually a neat-freak. He was downright anal. It was a source of amusement for his
friends that a long-haired guitar player was so into cleaning. He’d straighten up the coffee table in his dorm
room at Berklee College of Music in Boston, while his buddies were still sitting around it doing bong hits.
His obsession was the basis for much contention between us. It was like living with the uptight suburban
mom we had all fled from back east.
It wasn’t until years into the relationship that I realized what a rare gift his compulsion was. A guy who liked
to keep things clean. Feminism…whatever. Most of the women I know, women who are wage-earners and
mothers, continue to do most of their families’ household upkeep. No matter how hip you think you are, it’s
often like living in a version of Everybody Loves Raymond, where the wife is always getting on her husband
to help more around the house. Even my twenty-something, super, cool cousin and her awesome and
handsome boyfriend, who live off a grant to build bikes with ghetto kids in Houston, suffer the same old
struggle of who’s gonna do the dishes, put the laundry away and take out the trash, (and I’ll bet he leaves
his underwear on the floor, too).
Griffin knew this. I, obviously, did not. How could she complain about having to deal with the recycling? It
was a noble activity. It would save the planet, which was priority number one in our impassioned youthful
existence. (Duh… without a planet what else mattered?) Eating tofu and organic foods, buying from bins in
bulk, rather than buying products with needless packaging, refusing to buy feminine hygiene products-that
were a ruse created to trick women into hating themselves while spending money on unnecessary products
that were unhealthy and caused even more planetary pollution-(think about the fall-out from disposable
razors, plastic douche bottles - even disposable diapers), basically not becoming a giant consumer addict,
would save the planet.
We believed if we all were vegetarians or semi-vegetarians, eating less meat per day, like Asian and other
cultures, we could get rid of the humongous and unhealthy meat factories. We suspected, if we cared more
about the treatment of animals, we’d probably care about each other enough to stop senselessly hurting
and killing other humans, as well. If we loved ourselves enough to put only healthy foods into our bodies
and the bodies of our children, along with poison-free crops into the Earth, we’d probably stop killing Her,
too. Changes would includee using less eco-system destroying fossil fuels to run our transportation and
machineries. These true, yet idealistic aspirations were all consuming. It became exhausting to carry the
flame for the whole freaking planet.
Consumerism is insidious. It’s our culture. It’s our religion. My kid balks at the NO Mc Donald’s rule. The
yellow arches and their brethren loom everywhere. WalMArt is God. Come on, everything is so cheap
there. What’s so bad about Nike’s, again, Mom? (And, believe you me, I’ve eased up in the past 20 years).
(But not that much: Friends don’t let friends drink coffee at Starbuck’s).
Susan knew. She was asking for leadership. Why is it up to the keepers of the house to be the keepers of
the planet? After civilization had waged its big mess on the earth, women were expected to clean it up?
Where lie the Great Conscience of the People? (In New York City he thought to cancel curbside recycling).
How many times have I wished for the big guns to legislate truly fundamental environmental sensibility into
out daily comings and goings? Of course, we do have controls in place, certainly not nearly enough. Would
it be so hard for us to change our hedonistic ways? Perhaps, if we put a bunch of sit-com characters living
an environmentally friendly lifestyle on TV, arresting life changes would begin to permeate the culture on a
greater scale.
Years ago, on Fourth of July, I took the subway from Williamsburg, into Manhattan, and back into a different
part of Brooklyn, to visit my birth waters. Coney Island. I loved this beach. Dilapidated or not. I had come
here and sat on a big, beach blanket, under an even bigger striped umbrella with my mother before she died
a young and untimely death. She had hung out here as a teen-ager. My father had thrown me into these
familiar tides when I was 3 and I learned to swim. During grander times, when Coney Island was a working
person’s retreat, my grandfather had courted my grandmother on the Boardwalk in the sultry air beneath a
bright Brooklyn sky. He had been president of his Hebrew Club until the day he poetically died, playing
pinochle at the clubhouse.
This Fourth was disgusting. The woven, metal trash bins were overflowing with half-eaten Nathan’s franks,
knishes and soda cans. The once romantic Boardwalk was covered with a multitude of revelers’ stinking
refuse. Couldn’t the City of New York have anticipated the summer, holiday turn-out and provide the
necessary amount of garbage cans?
Coney Island had become an urban beach, a poor person’s paradise. White had not been the color of
choice, since the projects had gone up in the late sixties . Jones Beach on the Island did not lack in trash
receptacles. It was a middle-class beach. It was well maintained. The city did not care about the residents
of this neighborhood. My legacy looked like a dump. And furthermore, forget just plain old trash bins, why
weren’t there bins marked for plastic, cans, glass, paper and food waste, respectably? (Can you imagine?
Giant composting centers where the city’s food waste is transferred? The City Parks department could use
it, NYC-made dirt could be sent out of town to gardeners for absorbent fees, the community gardens that
had survived the bulldozer could use it, too…Bette Midler would be a shoe-in to promote that project.) New
Yorkers are not morons. Most would make it to the right can.
Subways needed the same system. Street corners needed the same system. What was the big deal?
Recycling reduces garbage. Garbage which has no where left to go in New York. Freshkills Landfill on
Staten Island is overflowing. The city gets into lawsuits over where to barge the waste of its denizens. As
Griffen knew, to think that a bunch of women in the kitchen washing out tin, green bean cans was going to
solve this epically, relentless problem was ridiculous.
Are humans truly such idiots? Our planetary life is threatened by our inability to deal with our waste and the
even greater inability to figure out how to simply make less of it. Plastic makes me insane. Oh, Ecotopia,
dreams of the land described in that book keep me whole and able to hope. Plastic type containers are
made from plant cellouse. Some are short lived, like coffee cups, others are long lasting. All are
biodegradable. In this future, large compost bins filled with dirt and certain organic matter line the city
streets. Type A gets thrown into a Type A bin to decompose, Type B into a Type B bin to meet its demise.
Viola! Heaven on earth!
So, where are our plant based, biodegradable containers? The world’s factories are tooled up to make
plastics a certain way and the petroleum industry really isn’t big on change, although the mothers of kids
being blown apart in Iraq may wish to differ. The sad fact is the utopian fantasies expressed in that classic
seventies novel, by Ernest Callenbach, have been a reality for a long time. The technology exists to make
plastics from plants, just like we’ve had the ability to create and utilize sustainable, recurring energy
sources. The leadership. Where is THE LEADERSHIP? (I’ve fantasized Callenbach writing a television
series based on Ecotopia, where the true socio-economic-ecological issues that face our time would come
to light in entertaining, yet thoughtful 30 minute installments.)
Although normally not a microwave user, I recently purchased Nancy Chung’s soup in a bowl because it was
made from plant cellouse. The box has a blurb about wanting to make a product that didn’t hurt the earth,
while still convenient, that I excitedly read aloud in the teacher’s lunchroom as I zapped my miso and
greens. I’ve often thought about writing to Nancy’s, the dairy company out of Springfield Oregon founded by
Ken Kesey’s wife, about such benign forms of packaging.
For years in Berkeley, I reused her yogurt containers until there was just not a possible use for another
one. During neurotic phases I’ve opted out of buying yogurt and cottage cheese altogether because of the
plastic. It seems that Nancy’s would be a great company to explore the use of biodegradable packaging.
Her cream cheese has a delectable bite to it due to the same acidophilus culture that permeates good
yogurts, but again, the residual plastic.
In an old journal entry I lamented about wanting a lipstick that did not come in a plastic casing. My whining
was answered by an innovative company, Burt’s Bees of Maine. They make a beeswax based lipstick that
feels incredibly healing on the lips and comes in a metal holder, as many of their products come in metal or
glass. At six or seven bucks, the lipstick is well worth it. Their other cosmetic products border on affordable
depending upon your budget, as do the lotions and shampoos that come from Body Time, the original and
wonderful, refillable Body Shop out of the Bay Area.
Persimmon is one of Burt’s loveliest shades of red. Oh, woe is me, ah, vanity. I am of the material world.
Visionary writer and activist, Starhawk, has said we are not monastic and we are not ascetics. We live in this
world. I use a plastic razor, but with replaceable blades, (and occasionally wear high heels). Perhaps, I no
longer qualify as a saver of the world. But I want to. At the same time I yearn to indulge in customs, enjoying
life in a way that makes sense to me, yet, without living decadently, without squandering the planet’s
resources. It’s so difficult to know where to draw the line between what is enough and what is excess.
The first article I came across about gray water excited me to no end. It concerned two newly constructed
office buildings in Seattle that caught rainwater to reuse in their toilets. Eureka! Claro! Of course! In a rainy
city like Seattle, why would good drinking water be used to flush toilets when a simple system could use the
untreated stuff that falls precipitously from the sky? When biodegradable soap is used to wash dishes, the
dirty, dish water can be rerouted to irrigate gardens and to flush toilets. If we lived in a world where taking
good care of each other came first, came naturally, gray water systems would be second nature, they would
be required by law in all new buildings.
But what kind of a world do we live in? You’ve seen the sci-fi movies where the final wars during earth’s
final days are about clean, drinking water. Think again. That fate is not consigned to the future alone. We
continue to pollute the drink that feeds us. In poor, poorer than poor nations, water systems have been
privatized. The disenfranchised populace withers without easy access to their birthright, clean water that
freely flows on this, our good earth. Again, I ask, where are the leaders? Where are the good guys, the wise
and the noble who will lead us to safety and joy?
A person can be as PC as they want. A person can buy the right foods, avoid the wrong packaging, but they
probably still have to drive their kids to school in a car that isn’t a hybrid. Behemoth semi’s still bring even
the groovy products to market. (Buy locally, I slip in, subliminally.) Don’t fret, I will not even begin that
conversation, the one about tax breaks for Hummers and SUVs, (that Hummers are even allowed to be bulit),
you know, the one about public transportation and, perhaps, slowing down a bit. If average Joe American
truly understood the suffering the much of the world endures to support our lifestyle, would we change?
The young couple next door doesn’t use the dish washer unless they have guests for dinner. I wanna say,
“Come on. Just use it. You have enough to do with three young children. Give me a dishwasher. The last
time I had to get fingerprinted for a teaching job, the officer had trouble getting a print because of all the
dishes I’ve done in my life.” My committed, endearing neighbor is concerned about her power bill. She
doesn’t want to waste energy. People need to make choices that make them comfortable. Personal morality
is a powerful tool. Individuals make a difference. Yes, while a small group of people can surely be the
beginning of changing the world, trying to be the all-out moral environmental barometer of our earthly
reality can become awfully time consuming.
Yeah, I want it to be easier. Every day. Responsible and wide-reaching reforms are desperately needed,
along with those not afraid to lead toward a sustainable reality.
I want easy access to recycling and compost receptacles when I am out in the community. Even better, I
want food and other stuff to come in biodegradable packaging. I want gray water systems installed by the
county or the state to irrigate my gardens and flush my toilets and the collective toilets of our public
buildings.
It took over 20 years, but I get it. Susan Griffin knew exactly what she was talking about. It‘s a pain to do the
dishes, no less save the planet. I work. I have a 7 year old. His job, the one he protests every time he’s told
to do it, is to take the recycling out back to the big, black bins.
Stephanie Silvia was born in Brooklyn and has spent a lot of
time living on both the east and the west coast. After years
of living in New York City as a choreographer, modern
dancer and public school teacher, Stephanie married a
fisherman and moved to Northern California. She is a
workshop student of Diane DiPrima, hung out in the poetry
scene at Life Cafe in the early eighties and holds an MFA
form the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Being
over 40, Stephanie has finally given more time to writing
than to making dances. She and her husband adopted an 6
year old boy last year, which is indeed the greatest dance of
all.I have been published in the 2003-04 College of the
Redwoods Poets and Writers Review
Stephanie Silvia