There was a season in our life that made a lot of sense.
I had moved out of our childhood home before it all happened. And then he moved out too.
And for a long season, there was a lot of secrecy and a lot of dinners at restaurants and a lot of cleaning up whatever he left behind at the old place and a lot more of feeling left out.
And then Fiddler's Creek happened.
New beds happened. That sectional happened. A whole season of 24 happened.
We'd all be there. The four of us and him. And it was clean and it was sparse and it was the best thing I can ever remember. We would cook or order out, usually on a Monday night so that afterward we could watch Kiefer Sutherland save the world.
After dinner he would always move to the sink in the small kitchen and wash the dishes.
We would offer to do it for him and he always shook his head.
He liked washing dishes, he said.
Most of what goes on in my days doesn't make sense, he tried to explain.
When I wash a dish it's dirty, then it's clean, and I get to put it away. Eventually, the whole sink is empty.
That made sense to him. That was his resolution.
A few years later I lived in a studio apartment and was a few months pregnant. I had let the dishes pile high and couldn't bring myself to tackle the job of washing them.
Finally, whether it was really that bad or pregnancy had heightened my sense of smell, I couldn't take it any longer. I rolled up my sleeves and went to work.
I remember being done and looking at the empty sink and knowing nothing moving forward would resolve quite so beautifully. And I was thankful.
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