I have always expected more from the dishwasher.

I used to watch, dumbfounded, as the adults in my life scrubbed the dishes clean before arranging them onto the racks of that lazy and sparkling silver appliance. And one day I finally did it. I asked the question that marked the beginning of my becoming a person:

“Why would I wash the dish before I put it in the dishwasher?”

and you know what?

this question I hope I continue to ask

this question that gets combed out of us when we are young because it is quite inconvenient for adults to have to answer

or perhaps because they don’t yet want us to become adults ourselves

this question of

why?

it is quite a tricky and scary question, one that makes me a person, one that complicates quite a lot — because it comes just after I’ve been split in two —

I become both the me who wants to ask why? and the me who knows the answer and cannot bear to be wrong

or worse:

right

so this secondary me interrupts,

don’t ask why?, you stupid, stupid girl

but anyway I do hope I continue to ask more from the dishwasher because in my opinion, it is not unrealistic to ask the dishwasher to wash dishes and I think this expectation of mine is an act of love.

Yes, I think this is what love is starting to mean to me, as someone who is becoming a person.

I have found that I am quite drawn to people who tell me the truth; I want the insides to match the outsides.

I want the dishwasher to wash the dishes.

And I am thinking this desire for truth in love rooted itself firmly when my team became my priority; love became about accountability.

Love is: respecting my loved ones enough to expect more from them

I think I have mentioned here before that I sometimes find myself quite attuned to how big I feel when I cross the street or how small I feel when I look at the clouds or the stars and lately, I have felt, so vividly, the great space I take up when I’m with my brother. I have noticed that my big sister identity is one quite practiced; naturally, as I have been a big sister for almost as long as I have been alive, this role, once a steady ship in a sea of shifting tides, is suddenly screaming to be examined. As physical distance between me and the only person who makes me a big sister has increased, as my identities have sneakily started to expand, I have neglected my big sister-ness.

I am writing to you from my father’s house in Hoedspruit, a small and growing town in South Africa, quite close to Kruger National Park. My brother and I have tacked on a visit at the end of a work trip and after much anticipation, we have spent our days here standing and drinking beer and watching birds and maybe walking and watching birds and maybe driving into The Park and looking for birds and also cooking and listening for birds.

Life slows here

to the sickening and sweet

pace of nature.

And in my shape-shifting ways, I have become more concerned with the trees than birds these days. The dynamics of this trio are such that I must turn to the trees in order to leave space for my brother to watch birds and talk about birds with my dad. It seems impossible that all three of us watch only birds together because

our ecosystem feels fragile.

and when it is just me and dad, we talk about other things and when it is just me and brother, we talk about other things but when the three of us are together, with all the changes, I fall back to the trees to create space — and the automatism, the intuitiveness is almost frightening.

What I’m trying to say

I guess

is that I am becoming a person

one with opinions and wants and ideas and thoughts and feelings

which is quite scary to me because inherent in becoming a person is unbecoming a non-person

and maybe even unbecoming the big sister I used to know how to be. and also daughter I used to be so good at being.

What I do know is that I want to continue to be a big sister. and a daughter, too. for as long as I live and love. But

what does this whole becoming a person thing mean for me and what I choose to do with my time? what does this mean for family time? what does this mean for partnership? will I always need to compromise in order to be in community with another?

“It is possible that when we choose to give up one freedom of a lower order, we achieve a freedom of a still higher order.”*

and as someone who is becoming a person does, I am starting to ask why? more often

and

worse

as a person may, I am starting to expect more from the people I respect and love

and I can only hope they start to expect more from me, someone they love and maybe even respect

because if the dishwasher doesn’t wash dishes why the fuck would it be called a dishwasher?

xx

Great Artists Steal

“the lover must often say, “I love because I must and because I will it. I love for myself, not for others. I love for the joy it gives me — and incidentally, only — for the joy it gives to others. If they reinforce me it will be good. If they do not, it will be good, for I will to love.’” from *Leo Buscaglia’s book, Love: What Life is All About; a book I never knew existed, a book for which I have been searching for at least one year now, a book I found in a used book shop here in Hoedspruit, of all the places.