Right now in your kitchen on the bottom rack of the dishwasher resides a secret; a dark spot on your soul – a malignant little horror that threatens to destroy your sense of self worth.
Maybe it’s a butter knife with an in-congruent rust spot on one side of the blade… Maybe it’s a random salad fork, the final piece remaining from a long forgotten flatware set, with a fossilized chunk of radicchio lodged between the third and fourth tines.
Probably it’s the fork.
There it has sat without being moved; without being touched; just existing as the metaphor that it is for 8 straight wash cycles. The result has never varied. The dirt remains.
Soon will come a ninth wash cycle. You hope that things will change. You know that they will not. Despite this unwavering conviction that the fork will always be *****, the next time you run the cycle, open the dishwasher door, peer through the gauzy veil of lemon scented fog and see the small bit of filth you will still feel disappointed. You will grow a little bitterer. You will be a little more contemptuous. The world will be a deeper shade of gray.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
You can go right now into the kitchen to the bottom rack of the dishwasher and reach down with a trembling hand to grasp destiny.
You are bigger than this fork. You are bigger than this fork.
You are bigger than this fork.
With a sense of control firmly clasped between your fingers take that 15 uncomfortable seconds to scrape away the debris with your thumbnail and then be free.
BE FREE
Deep and resounding will be the sigh of relief; the utter completion; the contentment absolute that you experience when you place that clean salad fork back in the drawer.
It will never match the new silver that your In-Laws gave you last Christmas, but at least it will be clean and in its home safely ensconced in that wire organizer.
Right now in your kitchen on the bottom rack of the dishwasher is a chance for redemption.
If you hung in all the way to the end, you have my gratitude. I hope it was worth it.