I have a dishwasher. You wouldn’t think such a thing matters, but it does. Maybe it goes back to making meaning of the mundane, or maybe it’s because of all the memories it triggers in me, way back to my childhood.
When I was a child, we had a dishwasher. But as with everything, my mother made this a challenge. Maybe it was back to my mother’s depression era thing, but that dishwasher could not be run until every teeny nook and cranny in the dishwasher was filled, although the pots and pans were washed by hand. Usually the corners of the dishwasher were filled with little plastic bags and used pieces of foil. So we loaded the dishwasher and waited for every corner to be full. Heaven forbid you ran the dishwasher too early. You could get in big trouble for that, even that was inspected.
No wonder I have battled lifelong anxiety, even small things were something to worry about.
When I got to college, I had a roommate, Lee Ann, who completely surprised me. Lee Ann would run the dishwasher every night regardless of how full it was. She even put the pots and pans in it. Sacrilege! But oh, the freedom in this, not having to worry about the tiniest of things. And we always had clean dishes, and the kitchen was always clean.
When I moved to Ohio to be with my now ex-husband, Ken, we had a dishwasher, but Ken wouldn’t use it no matter what. I dare say Ken was even worse than my mother. Everything had to be washed by hand. I never understood that – you have something right in front of you that would make your life easier, but you refuse to use it. Even when we got a trailer and went camping, Ken was attached to dishes. I was perfectly happy to use paper plates, reassuring myself that at least paper plates are recyclable. But that wasn’t good enough for Ken. We had to have real dishes, and as there was no dishwasher in the camper, somebody had to do them even when we were on vacation.
After our divorce, I lived in my marvelous house at Hamilton Street. This house had one drawback, it had no dishwasher. Somehow, we managed to survive, but with teenage boys, we never seemed to keep up with the dirty dishes. Same with the next address, my 288-sq feet apartment where at least two of us lived for a year and a half, and some of the time three of us did. There was no dishwasher there, and not enough room in the apartment to even keep everything clean.
Today, my sons and I have moved into our new apartment. I am happy to say that we now have a dishwasher, and I use it just like Lee Ann. We run it every day. We put the pots and pans in it. I have no anxiety about it. I feel grateful.
In the grand scheme of things, whether I have a dishwasher or not is trivial. But every day, every time I run that dishwasher, I think of my mother, and how every little thing had to be a thing, and even the dishwasher was traumatizing for me.
We don’t have to live in trauma. We can find a way to get out of it. We can shed the constructs of the past. Just like when I bought my Barbie at age 44, we can rewrite the tapes. In rewriting the tapes, we can do things differently. In doing things differently, we can learn to be free.
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