This Thanksgiving, I am thankful for the dirty dishes in my sink.
I am thankful to be free of the quarrels and silent grudges that grow between roommates from the simple chore of washing and clearing the dishes. Living alone I am forced to wash all my own dishes. They are my dishes after all and who else would be expected to wash it? I admit that even when others offer (a boyfriend, perhaps) I appear to surrender the task that I actually find therapeutic only to rewash them once said person has left the apartment. Someday, I will bravely venture into the unknown depths of my obsessive-compulsive psyche and reflect deeply on all my findings. Today, however, is about the things I am thankful for.
Lately more than ever it feels like I wash a ridiculous number of flatware and cutlery considering it is all for one person. Perhaps I am eating more frequently than I used to, or perhaps I am delaying the washing more than I used to. Whatever the reason is I was so annoyed by this feeling that I complained more than once to my tea-time friends about it. This is my life, isn’t it? Unending dishwashing?
At least you can see the TV from the sink.
True. Fine.
As I contemplate the clichéd metaphoric possibilities of dishwashing – daily cleansing of my spirit, clearing out the mess in my life, the repenting and forgiveness of sins – I cannot stop thinking about Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. The one printed seven years ago.
Harry Potter was so bitter and angry in the first few chapters of that book. Why wouldn’t he be? Neglected for a whole summer, suffering in the Dursley house on Privet Drive, attacked by dementors, kept in the dark by his closest friends, You-Know-Who always out to get him… I totally get it. But why so emotional? Why all the tempter tantrums? Done yet, Potter? I found myself being upset with him and stopped reading the books cold turkey. I could not deal with reading about moody teenagers having just come out of such an age myself when it was printed. So I did what I would have done if I were Harry in his situation. I shut the book and moved on to something else. (Hello, Aragorn.)
Seven years later I am at Kips Bay on Thanksgiving morning watching the seventh Harry Potter installment and feeling like I missed out on a lot. Thinking about the last time I was reading a Harry Potter book, I remembered the frustration. And I remembered the fear. Fear of negative emotion. The inclination to shut, close, and run is my way of surviving. I survive by avoiding. I choose flight, because nothing is worth the fight. I close up before someone closes me out. I shut down and walk away before I am walked away from. It is a pretty cold way to live but a girl living alone has to protect herself… or so I thought until recently. Being in a serious relationship has taught me that sometimes it is worth the fight because the championship belts are engraved with love and understanding. And, everyone gets a belt. The increasingly frequent tea-times with friends have helped me overcome my insecurity of being loved, as faith has guided us to accept each other for all the good and bad things we carry with us. And the sense that I abandoned Harry during a crucial time in his life and therefore missed out on his life’s subplots, subtexts and truths all because I did not want to face it with him weighed very heavily on my heart that morning.
So, in an attempt to finish all my unwashed dishes and face the reality of Harry’s emotions which mirror the emotions I have allowed myself to feel and reveal to others in the last couple of years, I am going to read through Harry’s fifth, sixth and seventh years at Hogwarts. Go Harry. Boo He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.
Bonus: I know the correct pronunciation of Hermione.
Happy Thanksgiving, Potter!
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