The dishes would stack up in the sink and eventually my dad would have had enough of it.
He’d call me in to help, and then he’d get frustrated with me, because I was too slow. That’s the thing I remember about washing dishes with my father — standing next to him at the sink not moving fast enough, and him letting me know.
I’ve thought about that a lot lately, and I want to be fair about it.
I was slow on purpose. Not consciously, not as rebellion, but I did not want to be standing there and my hands moved at the speed of a person who did not want to be standing there. If somebody had explained to me that the faster I finished the faster I’d be back to whatever I actually wanted to do, I suspect I’d have gotten quick in about a week.
Nobody said that, and it didn’t occur to me, and so I dragged.
I’m fast now.
Genuinely fast. Sometimes I finish a sink and I’m a little surprised at myself, because I know exactly how long that used to take me and it makes no sense that it’s the same task.
Nothing about my hands changed. What changed is that I want it done.
If I get the kitchen clean in twelve minutes, that’s twelve minutes and then all of us are on to the evening. Watching something, playing something, sitting around talking. The dishes are not the thing standing between me and my night. They’re about four songs.
And there’s the morning. My wife comes into a clean kitchen and the day can just start — nothing to deal with first, nothing carried over from yesterday sitting in the sink looking at her. She’s happier. That costs me twelve minutes the night before.
What I didn’t understand at fifteen is what it means to be part of a household.
I thought I lived there. I thought the house was something that happened around me and occasionally required something of me, and the requirements were an interruption.
That’s not what it is. Being in a family means you run part of it. That’s the deal, and it’s not a tax on the arrangement, it’s the arrangement.
Nobody laid that out for me and I’m not sure a fifteen-year-old absorbs it anyway. You mostly find it out later, when the house is yours and there’s nobody left to be frustrated with you.
My dad is still quick
I’ve never told him I finally got faster than him.
I wrote most of this standing at the sink.
David Willis 