Not My Proudest Moment

Originally uploaded by laundrylessons.

My sink sprouted. While I have a full herb garden out my kitchen door and grow perennials in my back garden, I’ve never been good at indoor plants. Until yesterday. It didn’t take trips to the nursery or watering cans delicately dribbling on tender leaves. Nope, all it took was a bit of procrastination.

My stationary tub, a real workhorse in my laundry room, had been dank for several weeks. The smell was mildew, mixed with undertones of rotting vegetable, a real pallet pleaser. Merritt wears a bib to eat all four of her meals and they are supposed to be rinsed in the kitchen sink, and then thrown in the soak bucket in the stationary tub. But sometimes there is residual food that gets stuck in the drain. The industrial sink is also where crusty soccer socks are thrown and muddy cleats are rinsed. The trap that catches this gunk was clogged and draining was slow. Conditions were ripe to support life.

Well the smell finally overwhelmed the laundry room and I decided to clean out the sink. After scrubbing away chunks of the soccer field and a sweet potato film, I saw it. New life. Some lentils had spilled in the kitchen cupboard and when I washed the kitchen floor, the rag that held the wayward legume ended up in the sink. The lentil soaked up the soccer field mud and water and yes, there it was, a sprout.

The absurdity of sprouting a lentil turned me into a giggling mess. I could have been totally grossed out by the shear nastiness of this event. Several of my intensely germaphobic friends will have lost all respect for me at this point. But the lentil’s new green tail, shooting a good two inches out of the drain, broke the monotony of my cleaning and put me in a funny place. I was in a good mood.

Before finding the lentil I was cranky, stuck at home with Merritt, cleaning, doing laundry, waiting for her therapist to come work her wobbly muscles. Sometimes this special needs baby stuff gets me down. But after my giggle-fest, I realized a good mood can sprout from anywhere, the conditions just have to be ripe.