“My mother broke the dishwasher,” I texted to my wife. “She ripped the door off of the front of it.”
“Or, she just touched it and it fell to pieces because it was old and crappy. Depends on who you ask,” I finished. As usual, when Toy Grammy comes over…things happen. And also as usual, there are different stories from different people as to what truly went down. The only fact that can be absolutely confirmed is that our dishwasher no longer has a front. She broke the fourth wall.
Of course the reason that she was touching my dishwasher in the first place is that she was doing my dishes. She was doing my dishes because she has been at my house since Monday. She has been at my house since Monday because Edward is not able to go to school on the high levels of medication that he is currently being pumped full of, and my wife and I both need to work and not go insane.
Over the past week Toy Grammy has stayed with Edward while I taught lessons and went to meetings. She has been kind and patient with him, even during times of medicinally induced intolerability when I struggled to keep my own cool. She is way better at parenting than I am. Of course she has had decades longer to practice, so I hope she does not let this go to her head.
The point is, I don’t think I could have made it through this week without her. As my pastor, Dark Murmurs, said the other day, if we had tried to sit down and plan out two free weeks of hospital stays and no school, we never would have been able to do it. And yet in the moment, help arrived. Meals were delivered to us, support was given, and my mother miraculously paused her own life to come over here and save ours. I suppose that, no matter what actually happened, this is worth more than a dishwasher. Thanks, Mom.