Do I Want It or Do I Need It?

It’s time for true confessions, so I beseech you not to judge me harshly. I have sink envy. There. I’ve said it.
It’s not as though I have the number of the vasser tregger on speed dial. We do, thank G-d, have indoor plumbing. There are sinks with running water where they need to be – one in each bathroom, one next to the washing machine in the laundry room, and one in the kitchen. And therein, my friends, lies the rub.

For a kosher kitchen, one sink presents a challenge. To turn over from meat to dairy or dairy to meat is like changing stage sets at an opera -- if the first act opened in Venice during Carnivale and the second in Siberia during a winter storm. Constant vigilance is required, lest someone, without thinking, drop a grilled cheese plate into the sink with the roast pan.

Others may pine for jewelry or Caribbean vacations, but I long for that second sink. Please don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mean a double sink where my single now resides. I want the big kahuna, a completely separate bowl deep enough to accommodate soup pots I could swim in on a summer’s day.

She doth protest too much, you say, and perhaps you are right. I’ve never actually lived in a house with separate sinks, and I’ve managed to keep my kitchens strictly kosher. Lately, though, I’m finding it more and more frustrating to get by with one. I mean I am daydreaming about being able to clean a chicken in one sink while the mugs from my morning coffee rest in another.

Who fantasizes about sinks?

When visiting friends who’ve recently redone their kitchens, some ooh and aah over the kasherable granite countertops or the Viking wall ovens. They drool as they gaze upon the specialty tiles and the hand-painted backsplashes. But I make a bee-line right for Sink One and Sink Two, staring longingly at them to the point of utter distraction.

They needn’t be fancy or graced with a professional-grade pot washer. No hot water tap is necessary either. Just give me a no-nonsense stainless steel bowl and a faucet.

In desperation, my husband called in the contractor, who said he could make it happen… if I were to compromise my minimal work area, part with the cabinet storing my fleishig pots, and let the equivalent of a few yeshiva registration fees pass from my hands to his.

Thinking about it further, I started to wonder if I sounded like my boys, who need cable television, must have another pair of sneakers, or require those special karate gloves. We always ask, “Do you want it or do you need it?” before considering their requests. I soon began to wonder the same thing about my missing sink.

Are two sinks really too much to ask?

I love our house. It isn’t too big and it isn’t too small. That a pair of sneakers and a sink are the only things my family is missing means that life, thank G-d, is good. And not getting those karate gloves – or the sink -- is a reminder that we probably can do without them in the first place.

When it came down to it, I realized that I just wasn’t prepared to lose my counter space. After all, where else would I store all those drain boards?

But a girl can dream, and while I’m dreaming, why not long for a third sink? One just for pareve…