The Light by Ann Goethals

This COVID day starts with the typical little indignities. For one thing, it’s day two of cool clouds in June, which, after brutalizing winters and good for nothing springs, is at least a yellow card for team Chicago. June is supposed to be the big payoff month, the finally-can-shed-the-hoodie month and so today’s fug, well that feels like a bridge too far.

And then there’s the sponge. Rank. Smelly. I have treated it with respect, drying it nightly in the dishrack, even microwaving away the microbes to prevent the rotting smell as my sister taught me. Yet here it is, punching me with its rottingness.

The drain catcher remains filled with last night’s dinner detritus, which I fleetingly remember was delicious. I am the only one in the family who scrapes out these disgusting suckers. Every morning I am reminded of what was for dinner last night and maybe, if I have been derelict, the night before as well. I sigh, and do it and usually it doesn’t really register as an affront in the early-morning-with-thin-skin category. But this morning. Lift, bang against the inside wall of the garbage can, briefly consider the downstairs tenants, bang some more.

The day, such as it is, is rolling out before me. I put on the coffee, go into the mudroom where I warm up the towels I left in the dryer last night, then round the corner back into the kitchen, still offended but now with the added aggravation that a dismal forecast in lockdown land engenders.

And there it is. 

In the before times, it was a largely ignored, mundane gadget, one of those DIY under cabinet fluorescents that I bought for $19.99. I remember having to install it myself because, well the kitchen is a cheap reno done by an old man and how often do old men think of being able to see the crap in their sink? I’m all about gender equality, but let’s be real. It’s women who more often face the shit and demand good enough light to see it.

And for some reason, early on this late June morning, when usually I need none of this electrical support because dawn breaks by 4:45 am around the solstice, I had snapped on that light to see the crap in the food catcher, then made my way to the mudroom to give the towels another spin and then I rounded the corner again.

There it was.

A fluorescent under cabinet light, doing all that has ever been demanded of it every time it is asked. Not beautiful or aesthetic in any way: no HD or soft white or halogen, just two fluorescent tubes and a condenser which some hardware store sage once explained is what makes the magic. It buzzes a greeting when turned on, and is sometimes left on all night. It is the sole illumination for the dog when we leave him, or used to, for an evening out. On black winter mornings, it is the first absence noted and the first switch flipped. And then in the summer, it goes on vacation, seldom needed and often forgotten, until late in the evening when dishes are scraped and washed and set to dry in the rack.

But this early summer morning when I needed light, what with the overcast and the doctor’s news and bad test results and the rage and fear over what the rest of our lives are going to look and feel like, well, that under cabinet light just brought it, as the kids like to say. Or used to.

“It,” was that warm healing feeling of home. The reward of living in a house for a long, long time, raising kids, making a career, sustaining a marriage, feeding several cats and dogs, and now, in these truly dark days, what a surprise that such a small thing, such a quotidian appliance has rescued my soul for just a minute. Lit itself up and whispered to me “yeah, well the Buddha says life is suffering and all, but here’s your coffee and here’s some fluorescent light for you which even I, stuck under the cabinet, know is out of fashion. But I rarely give you any hassle and you can still buy my bulbs at the hardware store.”

“Here we are,” the tubes murmur in their quiet buzzing, encased in cheap ribbed plastic, just around the corner from the towels tumbling, illuminating my rotting sponge and my fraying life.

“Just as we have always been. Offering it every day. Take it or leave it.”

And today, I took it.

Artist’s Statement

A writer is what I’ve always wanted to be, starting with the illustrated “My Cat Sam” published in a limited edition of one sometime back in the sixties. But a high school English teacher is what I became and I spent 34 years teaching and learning about the power of the written word, the ability of literature to teach empathy, understanding, and perhaps most importantly, empowerment. Retiring “into Covid” gave me the opportunity to slow down, look around, and use writing to work my way through the dark days. “The Light” began in fury and settled into a kind of meditative peace: one of the many gifts of the creative process. 

Ann Goethals is a retired high school English teacher who set aside her own writing aspirations for three decades in order to nourish those of her students in a public high school just north of Chicago. She retired “into COVID-19” (a not unhappy coincidence) and has since focused her energies on her own writing again. Retirement has given her the opportunity to turn all those phone notes and journal scraps into “real” writing. She works in all genres and has completed her first novel, “The Doublewide,” which is available to read on her website. She lives in Chicago with her partner Richard and their dog Dude.