Tidewoven Inc | The Dishwasher Incident: The Call From School

Elise was halfway through eating a protein bar in the break room when her phone buzzed with the caller ID every parent instinctively dreads: Lincoln Elementary – Ms. Markham She swallowed hard, wiped her hands on a paper towel, and answered. “This is Elise.”

A throat cleared. Then a polite, tightly reined-in voice: “Hello, Mrs. Reyes… this is Ms. Markham. I was hoping we could talk for a moment about something Lucy shared during morning circle.”

Elise closed her eyes. Of course. “Okay,” Elise said. “What did she say?”

A pause. Ms. Markham was choosing her words like she was defusing a bomb. “Well …Lucy told the class that your husband and her uncle had a… um… ‘domestic dispute.’ In the kitchen.”

Elise pressed her fingers to her forehead. “It was a disagreement about loading the dishwasher.”

“So it was an incident?”

“No. It was an argument about bowls.”

Silence. Then the teacher gently asked, “Bowls?”

“Elbow room for bowls in the dishwasher rack,” Elise clarified. “I promise no one was harmed. Except maybe Daniel’s pride.”

Ms. Markham exhaled in visible relief. “Okay. That… makes much more sense.” But she didn’t hang up.

Which meant there was more. Elise braced. “What else did she say?”

A tiny cough on the other end. “Well, she told the class that her Uncle Micah ‘stormed away like a dragon,’ then ‘hid in the garage to cool off before he exploded,’ and that your husband rearranged the dishwasher because ‘he is a man of very strong dishwasher morals.’”

Elise had to put her hand over her mouth to keep from laughing out loud. She failed. “I… see,” she choked out. “I’ll talk to her about… dramatic embellishment.”

Ms. Markham continued, still very cautious: “She also told the class that Uncle Micah is living with you because he’s ‘having a big brain problem, but he’s okay because Mom says he can cry on the floor if he needs to.’”

Elise slammed her eyes shut so hard she saw stars. “Oh my God.”

“It seemed… personal,” the teacher said delicately. “So I wanted to check in and make sure everything at home is safe and stable.”

Elise rubbed her temple so hard she nearly erased her own eyebrows. “Everything is safe,” she said firmly. “Everything is stable. Uncle Micah is recovering from a medical event, and we are supporting him. The dishwasher was the biggest argument this house has seen in months.”

Ms. Markham hesitated, then asked the question every mandated reporter has to ask: “No… concerns? For you or the children?”

“None,” Elise said. “Unless you count Daniel lecturing in-depth about water flow dynamics.”

“Ah.” A pause. “I will mark the situation as resolved.”

“Thank you.”

Before she hung up, Ms. Markham added with a small, warm laugh. “For what it’s worth, Lucy said it was ‘the most exciting morning of her life.’”

“Of course she did.” Elise hung up, dropped her forehead onto the break-room table, and let out a long, exhausted groan. She was going to kill Daniel. Then resurrect him so Micah could kill him again. Then have a very stern talk with Lucy. But she couldn’t even be mad. Because this was her family. Messy. Loud. Overly honest. Ridiculously alive. And Micah, for the first time in a long time, was in the middle of it.

Love this? Save it to Pinterest for later. 📌

Share this spark