One of the family

Before I met Eric, I'd never used a dish-rack.  Oh, sure, I'd seen ads for dish-racks in catalogues and had even watched people use them in movies.  But I'd grown up with easy access to a dishwasher, and somehow everything was miraculously dry every time I went to unload it.  My personal introduction to dish-racks came the first time I visited Eric's apartment in Fort Collins.  

We'd been dating a few months, and I was still in that shy, I-hope-he-likes-me stage.  On this particular afternoon, we'd just finished baking chocolate chip cookies and I was helping Eric do the dishes.  He washed.  And I... um, well, stared helplessly all at the prongs and ridges on his dish-rack.

Of course I was too embarrassed to admit my ignorance and ask for help.  What kind of woman would he think me to be, afterall, if I had to ask him how to clean a kitchen?!  So for a few minutes I made my most noble attempts at carefully organizing the dishes.  I lined them up meticulously, but after no time at all, the entire rack was full.  Sure that Eric must have another dish-rack somewhere, I announced (as casually as I could), "Okay, done!  This one is full!"

I will never  forget the look on Eric's face as he glanced my direction.  It seemed to be a mixture of surprise and doubt about my sanity.  For not only had I placed only one layer of dishes on the rack (it had never occurred to me to stack them!) I had also placed all the cups and bowls neatly upright, leaving little pools of water in the bottom of each.  And in positioning the dish-rack so I could reach it better, I had moved it a few centimeters away from the sink... neglecting to notice that water was now flooding the counter space instead of dripping neatly towards the drain!

Eric surveyed the scene in silence.  He reached across the counter and began flipping all the bowls and cups over.  He moved the dish-rack back to the sink-side.  I watched in amazement as he took the rest of the dishes and piled them layer upon layer until I was sure the whole tower would collapse into one horrific, shattered mess... but somehow it did not.  "To be a Holt someday," he finally said in a rather serious tone, "You will have to learn to stack a dish-rack!"

Now, any other girl would have swooned on the spot.  To be a Holt?! she would have thought, Wow!  He didn't even say "if"!  I wonder if he's bought the ring yet?!  But I was not that girl.  Instead of leaping, my heart sank, "I guess I failed the Holt-test.  If I got a dish-rack and practiced I wonder if he'd notice me stacking it right next time?"

I never bought that practice dish-rack.  In fact I never bought another dish-rack at all until last weekend.  Our new house, you see, has a large, deep sink but lacks a dishwasher... and after two weeks of lining ridiculous amounts of counter space with drying dishes, Eric and I decided we really needed to invest in a decent dish-rack of our own.

I had all but forgotten about my first dish-rack experience as I set our new purchase on the counter.  After dinner I washed everything until it gleamed and joyfully set about stacking it on the rack.  What a relief to have all the dishes drying in a two-foot piece of space, instead of spread across the kitchen!  "I love the dish-rack!" I called out to Eric, as my mound on the dish-rack grew higher and higher.

He strolled into the kitchen and stopped.  His eyes fell on the dish-rack and he looked impressed.  "You're really a Holt!" he announced with a grin.  My mind flashed back to that long-ago afternoon in his apartment.  "Because I stacked the dishes up high?" I asked, smiling.  "Yes, and because you just said you love your dish-rack!"

And I had a good laugh.  After all, with six months of marriage behind us, it's nice to know I'm finally bona-fide!