Monthly Archives: November 2024

Writing lessons from dishwashing, 40 years on

Here’s why Moses wandered the Sinai Desert for four decades: When you reach your sixties, four decades is the blink of an eye.

“Come on, old man, when are we getting to the Promised Land?” the Israelites surely told the grizzled prophet. “It’s been forty years already.”

“You’re kidding. Seems like only yesterday we left Egypt.”

Such were my thoughts during a recent trip to Seattle when Nonna and I dropped by Julia’s in Wallingford. In the fall of 1984, I was an impoverished writer working as a dishwasher at the popular restaurant. Time flies, but that wasn’t the only conclusion I drew four decades on. Rather, the trip reminded me that in hard times you aren’t always aware of the greater plot of your life.

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