The Finest Moment

March 23, 2026

Greetings from the extraordinary,

I wasn’t aware of spring’s arrival because it was disguised as every other late winter day. The drab grass, the trees raking the air with their skeletal limbs.  The sky was dull and uninspired, the clouds refusing interesting shapes.  Instead, it remained gray, monolithic, as if someone had pulled the least favorite afghan over the dome of our world.

I was doing dishes, looking out the window over the sink.  Just a few things that wouldn’t go in the machine to my left.  It wasn’t meant to be an event, it was just one of those mindless things that I do instinctively.  Like getting the mail or putting one sock in the laundry basket, not trying to solve where its partner was.  I was just doing the dishes. 

I was also not doing the dishes.  I was writing, or more honestly, not writing.  I had sparks of electricity in my legs, and couldn’t stay in the seat, in spite of the desperate demand of the words in front of me.  I had been writing, or pretending, for an hour. I know because I set an alarm to force myself to sit there, in spite of the voltage that urged otherwise.

The words I’d already written seemed like cousins from the old country.  I saw them, didn’t know them that well, couldn’t always understand them.  And yet, we were related, somehow. I may have stared at them for the entire hour, but nothing in that time inspired me to bring another word to join them.

I scrubbed something gelatinous from the pan, something caked there by heat and time. I realized that only hours ago this was cuisine and now it was this nearly disgusting scum that I was loathe to touch with my fingers.

I saw a spider in the well of the window.  She was small, harmless, her limbs impossibly fine.  She was busy.  She scurried up the glass, bent on some errand I could not fathom, everything she did seemed filled with purpose.  I tried not to analyze, realizing that watching a ballerina’s magic is lessened somewhat by dissecting the style in which she ties her shoes.

My focus changed for a moment and I saw the yard again, watched a murmuration of leaves make its way from where they had gathered months ago.  Why they chose to move now, whatever their intent, was hidden from me, as mysterious as the spider’s motivation.

It occurred to me to just let these dishes soak longer, to stop working so hard to scrape bits of egg or cheese from the pan. And yet, I reached for a scouring pad, applied vigor.  The water was hot, still frothy with detergent. My ambition faded.  I took the colander, whose history was less complicated, and wiped it out, rinsed it.  Nobody from the Nobel committee will call, but it felt like world-changing success.

The spider lowered herself on an invisible strand, pausing halfway down the window.  I wondered if she was looking in, or out.  What does she make of the first day of spring, or the man standing in front of the sink, hands in water, a slightly lost look on his face?  She finishes her journey toward the sill and my focus blurs again.

In years past, after holiday meals, I liked to do the dishes.  It is my humble contribution to the effort, but it is also a selfish moment. Everyone pushes away from the table, and I organize the stacks of plates and pans, the mounds of silverware we only see once a year.  I fill the sink with sudsy water, play a little Van Morrison, pour a glass of wine, listen to my family in the other room.

It is not a chore, it is not tedious, it is a pleasure. Because I chose it that way.

The words on the page in my den might as well be a thousand miles away.  Easier to avoid them by holding that image.  I wonder about the toaster for a moment; have I ever emptied the little crumb tray? The bowls make a low, dull chime in the soapy water, the sound of Buddhist temple.

The spider makes a diagonal run across the window. A door opens somewhere in the dim hallways of my mind and a thought eases partway across the threshold.  I watch the spider pause, make tiny graceful explorations with her legs, strumming the air with gossamer fingers.

The words fall into me, vivid. They are behind my eyes, in a cloud of other words, but I can sense them clearly.  My mind has finally become uncoupled from the driverless locomotive that hauled my conscious. I waited for a moment longer, my fingers dripping into the pond of dirty water, the spider swiveled, now raising two legs, as if conducting the moment.  I reached for the towel hanging from the oven door.

It is not an original thought, but it dawned on me, in the humble way that some things arrive, that there is never an ordinary moment. Not really.  We can allow ourselves to be common, shuffle through with the same transactional approach from one hour to the next.  But only if we ignore the truth in every breath.  Every ordinary moment is pregnant with something extraordinary.

I left the sink and walked into my den, slipped the words from where they’d waited to where they belonged.  It seemed impossible, because this exceptional moment was eclipsed by another. One moment, finer than spider’s silk, filled with the mundane and astonishing in the same tick.

Hope this finds you seeing the magic,

David

Copyright © 2026 David Smith