I Couldn’t Stand the Sound of the Dishwasher

Dear Delyara, Tonight the hum felt personal. Like one more machine in the house asking me to keep track of it, unload it, refill it, start it again tomorrow, manage the cycle of things that keep needing to be handled by the same pair of tired hands. I was standing at the sink when it started, and I felt immediate irritation move through me so sharply that I had to grip the counter. The dishwasher was not the problem. Neither were the dishes. The problem was how little room there is now between one completed task and the next thing already waiting to become mine. I turned the television on in the next room just to drown the machine out. Then I hated myself for needing noise to survive noise. That’s the kind of evening it was.