house/work

RACHEL ANDREWS

It is Saturday morning. I am standing at the kitchen sink, scrubbing the frying pan. The chaos of breakfast is spread all around. Outside the window, the clouds form grey clusters, shadowing the children’s swing set, their green trampoline. There are flecks of white flowers on the apple tree we planted seven summers ago. The frying pan is not new, nor was it expensive, and it is not easy to clean. The leftover egg clings to its base and sides. It takes a while to wash it properly, soaking and rinsing and scrubbing again until, at last, the task is complete. I rinse, dry, put away. In half an hour or so, I will repeat the cycle. But for now, a pause.

Does time stop, at this moment of pause?

A painting by Paula Modersohn-Becker called Still Life with Fried Eggs in Frying Pan. ModersohnBecker painted it in 1905—two years before her death at the age of thirty-one—during a period of intense productivity when she created portraits, self-portraits, and over fifty still lifes. The image: four eggs in a frying pan, four sumptuous mounds of orange inside a thick slick of white. To one side of the frying pan, an empty glass. To the other, a carafe of water. At the front, a lemon, halved. The frying pan slopes a little; the egg white appears as if it might spill out. The other objects look equally unsteady. They are on a tilting kitchen table. The background is cool white, grey. There is a hint of lilac. The art historians who have written about Modersohn-Becker have