19.6.05

Trapo Loyalist

Last night, as I was washing away the residue of entomatada ingredients, I remembered being ten or eleven, looking at the multi colored foaming Ocello sponge my madrina held in her hand. She quickly scrubbed away all the food from her dishes and ran them under the running water. She would sometimes keep a bowl of soap, Clorox and water mix by her sink. More often than not however, she dropped a few drops of Dawn or Joy on the sponge. When the sponge began to fall apart, she would dump it in the trash can she kept under her sink and take out a brand new one probably from the other side of the cabinet under the sink.

My mom, her older sister and downstairs neighbor, in my mind, was too old fashioned for an Ocello sponge. My mom used a washcloth. Un trapo. It could have started its service in bright magenta, but by the end of its first dishwashing experience, it was a faded pink. El trapo would help her serve a plate of steaming enchiladas. It would experience every cleanable surface in the narrow kitchen and sometimes even the floor. After dozens of kitchen cleaning adventures, it would end up torn, tattered and sometimes frayed. Mom would dump it in the trash and bring out another washcloth. I don’t know if she sometimes used the washcloths we used to shower, this was before the pouf era, but it never grossed us out because my mom used more than enough Clorox.

Despite swearing that my madrina’s sponge was better than my mom’s trapo at a ripe age, these days I can’t do without a trapo in the kitchen. Some people think it’s gross because they believe it germinates bacteria, but a study that was discussed on 20/20 and Oprah about bacteria in your kitchen claimed that sponges create more bacteria. This however, is not the reason I chose the trapo over the sponge. It’s more along the lines of fidelity. Just like I can’t stop being Catholic even though I disagree with the Church about a lot of things, I can’t betray my mom’s trapo. Nothing feels better than submerging your hands in a mix of Clorox and dish soap in hot water to find a sopping wet trapo.

What do you keep in your kitchen?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

trapo y esponja. guerito

Unknown said...

a sponge and a brush and i fantasize about a dishwasher each time i use them.