Doing the dishes

My mother wants me to wash a dish the same way she does.

First she turns on the faucet with the back of her hand. She squirts a generous amount of neon green soap onto the dish and reaches for the scrub brush, clenching it in her fist.

Her knuckles turn white as she furiously scratches the remnants of her mother's lasagna recipe off the plate. I would've stopped after a few moments of scrubbing, but she keeps at it. You have to use elbow grease, she says.

If I scrub a dish at all, it is like a cursory glance at something mundane. The fake plant that hangs off the mantle that could use a good dusting. It blends in. I forget it is there in the same way she would like to forget that I do not wash a dish the same way she does.