Dish Washing for the Soul
I rounded up the fading dishes and soiled silverware from the table as Leah dragged her slippered feet to the sink. Flicking the faucet on, she waited for the water to become hot enough that the steam rose and obscured her glasses. I piled the plates, still layered with leftover mashed potatoes, and glanced begrudgingly toward our parents. They lounged back in their wooden dining chairs with a certain amount of satisfaction that came not only from the hearty dinner they just enjoyed, but also from watching their two daughters diligently doing their chores.
Although there were a dozen of other things that I would have much rather been doing than wiping the slime of gravy off our plates, I was never troubled with spending the extra time with Leah. Our situation was unlike most siblings. Leah was my adopted half-sister and nine years older than me. Until she started high school, she lived with her mother and stepfather on the other side of Pennsylvania with our adopted half-brother, Tony. This was only the second year she had started living under our shared Dad’s roof. Considering that my childhood wish was to see my siblings more often, I was ecstatic just to be spending time with her.
Every week night, Mom prepared the dinner. The four of us - Leah, our parents, and I - would settle down at the dining table and take turns asking one another the same daily question:
“What was the best and worst part of your day?”
Our eyes rolled up toward the ceiling whenever our Dad, without fault, would reply every time,
“The best part of my day is right now, sitting with all of you.”
On holidays and in the summers, Tony would stay with us and attempt to steal Dad’s daily “best part of the day” reply, mimicking his voice while a snide smirk spread across his face.
After each of these dinners together, Leah and I, with the occasional aid of Tony, would usually have clean up duty. However, once Leah lived on her own and Tony started college, I was left on my own to battle the dishes. I would plead and propose compromises with my Dad, since the only minuscule luster of the chore had gone and moved out.
Whenever Leah made her way back home for a free family dinner or Thanksgiving celebration, we would stand side by side once again scrubbing off the family’s neglected bits of food. The glee of doing something alongside my sibling would always come rushing back, no matter how mundane the task at hand. Tony refused to help with dishes on Thanksgivings because he annually whisked away speed-peeling the potatoes to be mashed. We understood this as a viable excuse.
After many dinners and years of greasy plates had passed, there came a snowy day when a phone call informed us that there would be one less placemat at the table, one less pair of soapy hands, one less member to mash the potatoes. Tony had fallen asleep the night before and had never woken up.
This time, the four of us settled into a car and made our trek across the state to reach our nuclear family in Pittsburgh, where my brother had lived. We spent the majority of the week at my grandmother’s house. Being a full-blood Italian, my grandmother felt that the best way to face tough times was to have a full stomach. Dirty dishes piled in her sink, and everyone’s blood-shot eyes avoided the mound in order to avoid the chore.
Some say that washing dishes can be considered a form of therapy, with the right perspective. Picking up a particularly disgusting plate, a person can imagine all of his or her dirty troubles residing right within the grime. Then, physically scrubbing away at the dish until sparkling can give a person the positive feeling of tangibly showering the muddy parts of life right down the drain.
Leah and I approached the intimidating pile in the sink. We waited for steam to hang in the air, notifying us that the water was hot enough to warm our cold hands. Grabbing mugs, we began rubbing them with soapy sponges. Leah and I conversed about memories of Tony from when we were younger, all the while never forgetting to lather, rinse, and repeat.
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