What Happens When Your Dishwasher Breaks
When I was a child I remember cleaning up after the family meals
and hand washing dishes. I thought it was like punishment most
of the time. I complained most of the time, but my father and
mother insisted that I learn this "life skill as they called it.
I called it washing dishes. None the less my dishwashing career
was a long and fruitful one growing up in a middle class family
in Colorado.
I remember I was about thirteen years old when the savior of
dish pan hands took mercy on me and my mother and father bought
a dishwasher. I was overjoyed. All of my friends had one and my
family was one of the last ones to purchase one. My parents kept
saying "we already have you we do not need a dishwasher." They
knew I was growing up and that I would soon be fledging from the
nest and they were not going to be doing the dishes by hand.
That was for sure. This so called life skill had taken on a
light of labor as time went on.
So the day it showed up, my mother was overjoyed. I though my
days of hand washing were over and the easy days of slamming and
cramming dirty, filthy, dishes had arrived in full force. Well
my parents had a different idea. My mother was enamored with her
new toy and I actually got a month's reprieve from cleaning up
after dinner because my mother wanted to experiment with her new
toy.
Well when the time finally came that my mother had experimented
enough and found that her method of "using the dishwasher" had
actually become more work than actually hand washing the dishes
she finally appointed me as the head dishwasher again. With
stipulations this time though. She had developed a very arduous
process by which all of the dishes had to be rinsed spotless and
then placed in the dishwasher in order for it to work properly.
That was my mother's assertion anyway.
So I was back at it once again, but this time it was different.
I was getting older, I was spending more time away from home and
involved in more activities that were not family oriented. So in
a way the dish washer's arrival was symbolically my coming of
age. I can remember thinking that I could not wait to get out of
my parents' house and on my own to never wash dishes again. We
all know that is not the case.
I am grown now and have children of my own and yes sometimes
they load the dishwasher after dinner, but I cannot seem to
break the tie I have to the memory of my mother and father and
dinner time together. The discussions, fights, silence, and joy
that were had prior to the dish washing lamentation that
ultimately holds my memories firm in relationship to dinner
time. I actually wonder what families that never spend time
together before, during and after dinner do to stay together.
I wonder what happens when the dishwasher breaks.