The Dishwasher That Changed My Life

Life is hard, so make it easier when you can

My beloved Kenmore Elite

When I was ten years old, we moved into a house that had a kitchen with no dishwasher. My mother decided our water bill would be lower if we didn’t have one installed, and so “we” — meaning mostly she — washed dishes by hand in the sink.

I’m not sure why my parents weren’t stricter delegating chores, at least to me; my sister was out of the house by then. I think Mom always thought of me as fragile because in kindergarten my test scores indicated that I was dumb as a rock and I struggled socially and I was extremely sensitive and so perhaps she thought asking me to do anything more than empty my bedroom trash basket might send me over the edge.

She didn’t ask my dad to do the dishes either, probably because he didn’t get them as clean as she did and she was just the teeniest bit obsessive-compulsive, so she slipped her hands into yellow plastic gloves and washed those dishes meal after meal, 98% of the time. I remember a lot of sighing and hunched shoulders and not-quite-under-her-breath muttering about being unappreciated and sometimes there were tears as she scrubbed and rinsed dinner plates and utensils into squeaky-cleanness.

My mother had a very demanding job as a lower school music teacher and her life would have been much easier if we’d gotten a dishwasher. With a little less retail therapy, we could have more than afforded any increase in the water bill. Mom wouldn’t have felt so put upon and the rest of us wouldn’t have felt like infantilized wretches, scurrying out of the kitchen as The Curtain Of Guilt descended.

I recently watched an interview clip with Canadian astronaut/rock star/author Chris Hadfield in which he stated that everyone’s family is a mess. After practicing therapy for 20 years, I have to say I concur. Everyone’s parents screwed up to a degree (although admittedly some more than others) because they only knew what they knew while they were raising kids, none of whom came with operating instructions. At 61, I just now feel prepared to raise children, but the ones I have are 26 and 21, and my baby-making kitchen closed a long time ago.

Anyway, I vowed that I would always have a dishwasher when I grew up and I did until The Daughter and I moved into my last home in Los Angeles, that tiny, rent-controlled apartment with a view of a concrete wall. For five long, tedious years, we — and I do mean we, because I intentionally raised a daughter who would know how to take care of herself — washed dishes in the sink.

The reason I ended up washing dishes in the sink again was because I didn’t believe in myself as a young adult. I’m not saying that washing dishes as a child in and of itself would have enabled me to choose the right person to marry. But because I didn’t learn to do basic stuff when I was young, I was convinced I couldn’t rely on myself as an adult. So I became overly reliant on the wrong men and then had to learn The Hard Way how to get shit done in middle age. I went from not being able to do enough for myself to doing too much alone, but I’d much rather feel like I can handle things than not, especially now that I have entered Decrepitude.

As my 50s slipped away, and I stood in front of my kitchen sink the way my mother had decades before, scrubbing and rinsing and sighing, I determined that I would have a dishwasher again. It took moving across the country so I could afford to buy a home, but I did, and it came with sassy new appliances, and My God, do I love my Kenmore Elite dishwasher.

Often red letters flash on the display panel telling me to “Add A Dish” before I run the machine. (I usually don’t obey). For those of you who have had a dishwasher in recent years, suggestion-making appliances may seem de rigueur, but I felt like I’d entered the Age of Neo-Enlightenment the first time I realized my dishwasher was “talking” to me. Not only did the appliances in my shoebox apartment not talk to me, but they were also old and dingy white, and when the plastic refrigerator handle snapped off I didn’t even bother telling my landlady, we just pried open the door from the side.

So now, I sometimes stand in my kitchen and stroke my sleek, stainless steel appliances, like Carol Merrill on Let’s Make A Deal. I marvel at having a refrigerator big enough that I can’t keep it full, a dishwasher that keeps me from ever having to scrub a food-encrusted plate or fork again. Every time I run that thing — without even filling it all the way up!! — I remember where I used to be, not that long ago, and I bask in gratitude for how much better my life is now.

Mom also ended up in a new, better home in Asheville that came with a dishwasher — avocado green, I believe. In her final years, she let herself relax and enjoy this convenience.

Commander Hadfield, the Canadian astronaut, says we’ve got it all wrong. Life is hard, and instead of expecting it to go just the way we planned, we should prepare for when things go wrong. Because inevitably they will. Only when you’ve got the right attitude and enough discipline, he says, can you truly appreciate the wonder of existence.

And if you’ve never heard Hadfield singing his cover of David Bowie’s Space Oddity, I urge you to watch him make something so hard — besting David Bowie while at microgravity — look so easy.

David Bowie reportedly said Hadfield’s cover was the most poignant version of Space Oddity.