While I was washing the dishes this morning, I was reminded that I’m
unusually guarded about the coffee pot.  I’ll wash the coffee pot; I almost
always do.  I’m the only coffee drinker in the house.  I brew the
coffee.  I fill the carafe to the six-cup line, shovel the grounds, click
the switch.  I empty the pot.

In K.C. we had a fancy dishwasher.  It did the work of clearing grime
from all the kitchen-wares.  But in N.Y., we’re back to washing by hand. 
And Ph., at fourteen, is as good as any of us at keeping us with enough clean
dishes to eat.  No matter how we arrange our turns at the sink, however, I get
an itch about others washing the delicate glass pot, especially Ph.  In
fact, I often ask him to leave it as the final dish, then I’ll wash it. 

What’s so special about the coffee pot?  I’m not sure.  That’s
the thing.  It just seems fragile to me.  But this
morning–first leg of a chore-filled Friday–I had a flash of insight, a
coffeepiphany of sorts.  I’m almost certain somebody broke a coffee pot
when I was a kid.  I can’t remember who or under what circumstances or what
even came of it.  Did it crack from careless washing?  Must’ve. 
Least that’s what I told myself this morning.

In turn I associated the not-quite-a-memory with the Twilight Zone
episode–"Time Enough At Last"— where the bank worker, after avoiding global
catastrophe because he was in the vault when the world ended, finds himself with
a bulk of time for reading.  Just Henry Bemis and books; time stood still. 
And he’s overjoyed about it, as I remember (a re-run me and J. watched multiple
times on late-night TV, early teens), so overjoyed that he manages to step on
his glasses.  Without them he can’t see well enough to read.  Bemis
was one sorry dude.  Woe!

Because I’m the only one who even thinks about coffee (not the only
one who thinks differently about the fragility of the pot) in the house, it’s a
similar sort of despair that I’m trying to intercept, assist others in avoiding. 
Interventional dish-washing, as I think of it.  Was I the one who broke the
pot as a kid?  Could it have been me?  Doesn’t even matter.  That
it’s implicated in my action–in my everyday way of living–presents me with an
odd quandary, and I’m not sure, even connecting it up with Bemis, that I’m any
closer to feeling differently about it.

Henry Bemis, now just a part of a smashed landscape, just a piece of the
rubble, just a fragment of what man has deeded to himself.