The Dishes

“Don’t put bowls on the bottom rack, they should go on the top rack”

“Cups go here.” 

“You want the utensils to be facing up.”

Emily could write the “Tiffanys Table Manners” book for loading the dishwasher. She has such a clear vision for the load when she takes on the chore. And more than anything else — more than passenger seat driving, selecting a TV show or restaurant, or overhearing a conversation between me and my mom — Emily is over my shoulder whenever I grab a dish to put in.

Tsk. Tsk.  

Have I ever gotten it right?

I feel like I’ve loaded the dishwasher a million times since we started living together, and honestly, all the dishes are fine. They really are. I have a perfect record.

It’s not a favorite activity of mine, either. Getting dishes from the sink covered in food, sauces, and gunk, half-filled with water, with things floating around — who can like that or care about it one bit? 

Now I’ve come to be a bit of a pro at it.  I’ve learned all of Emily’s rules.

And my passion for doing the dishes has grown out of hating the messy sink.  I always keep one eye on the sink whenever streaming through the kitchen, in a never-ending quest to stay ahead of anything being left inside. If there’s room in the dishwasher and I know the applicable rule, it goes in. If not, at least I get it rinsed off, dash some dish soap on it, scrub it a little, and put it on a drying towel. 

Should there ever be a dirty dish anywhere in the kitchen, ever? 

Boy, Emily has trained me well.

Funny that I remember doing dishes a million times in a thousand ways with Emily over my shoulder, yet I can’t remember doing the dishes a single time  before we got together.  Literally, not a single time.

Did my parents ever require me to do the dishes as a chore?  What did I do with my cup after having a glass of milk?  Where did my dinner plate go?  Did I just leave it on the table and walk away, or did I throw it in the sink?  It’s a complete black hole.

When I went off to college, my dorm room didn’t even have a sink. There was no such thing as a dish.  I moved into my fraternity house, and again, no sink, no dishes.  Two full years of my budding adulthood, and there wasn’t a kitchen sink, dish, or dishwasher to be found!

I moved into a little single family house after that with a roommate, and that place had dishes, a sink, and a dishwasher.  The same was true for the house I moved into after college, during law school.  All those years living with a sink, a dishwasher, and dishes before living with Emily…but was any of it ever used?  

Did I just use a glass and leave it on the table and walk away then?!  People would have noticed dishes piled up all over the house…

Maybe…just maybe…yes, it must be true, I must have put the dishes in the dishwasher even back then. 

It must have been a perfect record back then, too. All the dishes survived.