The Fridge From, Well, YOU KNOW

Originally published in the Cheboygan Daily Tribune...

When I was about 4 years old, my mom bought a brand new, avocado green refrigerator to go with our newly decorated orange and gold kitchen. There was nothing special to this fridge--just a freezer on top and fridge on the bottom. This fridge went with us when we sold the house, moving 235 miles from our old house to our cottage, where it went nicely with the avocado kitchen cupboards. Honestly, I don’t think the thing ever actually died. My parents replaced it with a white fridge from their home, years after my mother had stripped and restained the cupboards, after we had the green shag carpeting torn up and replaced with a light berber. I’m pretty sure it was about 35 years old.

See, that’s how a fridge should be. You should have a fridge so long, you just plain get sick of looking at it. It should be moved to a cottage, then sold at a shockingly low rate, then bequeathed to a young couple who are just thrilled to have enough money to put food into it. A fridge shouldn’t DIE. Especially after five years.

Apparently, our fridge missed the memo. It was a horror from the get-go. I’m beginning to wonder if, when our priest lived down the street, we should’ve had him perform an exorcism on it. That thing never liked us and, truthfully, we never like it, either.

When we selected this particular fridge, it wasn’t because we were so excited about its style or interior design or the amount of storage. We picked it because it was black, it had a water/ice dispenser on the front, and it fit in the space in our kitchen. So, maybe it was us. Maybe we made the fridge feel bad, and that’s why it lashed out at us.

One or possibly two days after the warranty on this fridge expired, it stopped dispensing ice. It still made ice--in fact we couldn’t get it to stop and it overflowed the freezer--but refused to dispense any. A very nice repairman, Chris, came out not once, not twice, but THREE TIMES, trying to figure out what in the world was going on. We became friends, but he couldn’t fix the ice problem. We could have crushed ice--when we pushed the “cube” button--or we could open the freezer, slide out the bin (spilling ice everywhere in the process) and get cubes. This we could live with.

A year or so later, the freezer door started popping. Every time we shut the refrigerator side (it was a side-by-side), the freezer door would just slightly pop open. This was not a handy development, since our Littles were just beginning to use the fridge by themselves. “Shut the freezer!” could be heard screamed across the house many a time, but we also lost several beloved and expensive frozen items (meat, ice cream, Outshine Bars) to the stupid door. We tried adjusting the doors, to no avail. We gave up. With yelling, we could live with this, too.

Then, some shelves broke. One was a side-door shelf, which we ordered on-line and it basically fit. Another was the shelf which held the meat drawer. Hello, duct tape. Apparently, as the Clampetts, we could live with this, too.

The last straw in any affection we had left for the fridge was when, in a freak of nature, the freezer walls began expanding and the drawers no longer fit. We’d be sitting at the dinner table and--“BAM!--a drawer would drop down. Whenever we’d try to slide a drawer out, it would turn into a magic trick attempt, where we’d try to balance the sides just so in order to get the drawer back in. It rarely worked.

Thus, this summer, we really hated this fridge. We would call it bad names. We’d slam the freezer door. We said, “If you were a horse, I’d put you out of your misery.” Our nephew made some suggestions about how to improve the fridge and I made some suggestions about where he could sleep that night. We were not on speaking terms with the fridge. And so--on the summer where my paychecks were significantly docked due to sick leave AND we had a three-week no paycheck due to a weird pay schedule--the fridge quit. Caput. Done. Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.

The Hubby went to buy a new fridge, financed out as far as it could go, including the new “special order black” color (really? BLACK is special order?). I think we should’ve gone looking for the avocado fridge. I bet it could teach this new one a thing or two about keeping a family cool.

Biological Family

The Littles asked me about "Dave" today. Dave, my biological father. They know a lot about his parents, Grams and Pa. I wish they could've met my grandpa; I wish they remembered my grandma. I am not particularly upset that they don't remember Dave.

Maybe you think this makes me sound heartless. If you do, feel free to stop reading. Maybe you understand, if only a little. If you do, please keep reading.

My parents were divorced when I was an infant. I explained to Ben and Becca today that I don't remember EVER living with Dave. I know I did once, as a tiny infant, but I certainly have no memories of it. I have memories of visiting with him throughout my life--at his home or my grandparents' home--but never really feeling the same way that I feel about my Dad.

Throughout my life, Dave and I had a roller coaster relationship. At times, I would try very hard to keep in touch with him, to make a relationship with him, to act in ways that would make me feel like he actually liked me. At other times, I really believe he tried hard to create a bond and make our relationship work. But, it was always a strained thing, a large effort for both of us, and I'm not sure I even one time acted like my real, actual self around him. I accept some of the blame for this, and I hope he would, too.

In the end, as I told The Littles today, Dave hurt me too much for me to repair our relationship. At the time, my grandmother had recently passed away, and I began to see that she was the glue that had always held us together. If I'd ever thought about ending any contact with Dave, I would remember that it would mean I'd have no way to know what was going on with Grams, and I just couldn't do it. But, once she was gone, I feel like our true feelings came out. He hurt me, and I was finally unwilling to excuse it and move forward.

My priest at the time gave a sermon on forgiveness, and it caused me a lot of strife. Was I being a true Christian? Should I keep trying and trying to make this relationship work? Fortunately, I talked to my priest about it, and he helped me to understand the difference between forgiveness and being a doormat. I could forgive Dave for what he had done, but it didn't mean I had to keep going back for more. It was okay to let the anger go, but not continue allowing him to hurt me.

My current priest has given a sermon saying the exact same thing. It's been validating and comforting. It is still hard to explain to an 8- and 10-year-old why we don't have contact with someone who is related to them and is still alive. Did he hit me? Did he yell at me? No. Did he hit or yell at them? No. Then why wouldn't we see him anymore?

The way Dave hurt me the most, and my mother the most, was in not truly seeing me, and not seeing her. I remember being places with him and he would say, "This is my daughter, Laura. She's on the Dean's List at Western" or fill in some other accomplishment. I feel like, right now, he would tell people I write an article for the local newspaper. In my head, I would think, "What does that have to do with you?" My mom and dad were the ones who made sure I got to school every day. They were the ones who went to parent-teacher conferences. They were the ones who helped me with homework (My dad would, of course, bring up a project we did together on the Appalachian Mountains when I was in fourth grade. We got an A. He was super proud of us. Lol.) They grounded me and spanked me and lectured me, all when needed. They congratulated me and encouraged me and celebrated me, all when needed. They knew me as a smart, strong-headed, smart-mouthed kid. They know me as a smart, strong-headed, smart-mouthed wife/mother/teacher who puts her family above everything else in this world. Dave did not see that.

The final straw was that Dave told lies about me. He told his family that I wanted his mother's money. He told me one thing for years, and told them something else entirely. Then, when I acted confused, he made me look like a gold-digger.

I didn't care about my grandmother's money. I wanted every cent spent on her happiness, since I certainly never had to milk the cows or feed the calves or scoop manure or drive a tractor or any of the millions of other chores she and Pa performed daily as dairy farmers. It was never my money. When my grandma wanted to move into senior housing, I wanted her to use her money to live in a palace. When my grandma bought a bright blue Ford Fiesta "because it was cute," I said "Good for you!" When she was in a nursing room and she wanted a single room, I went to the front desk and said, "She wants a single room. Do it."  The only thing I wanted when my grandmother passed away was the necklace I saw her wear daily, because it was a piece of her. I also wanted her wedding rings, because I wanted to give them to my daughters and I didn't want them to be sold, not because I wanted to sell them. I never got them, though. What I got was accusatory emails about how I was selfish in expecting the money Dave had said for years I would inherit when my grandmother passed away. Apparently, he had only told me that, not anyone else in his family.

There's a lot of he said/she said. It's not even anything I care to think about anymore. It's irrelevant to my life now. Except for when my children ask why they don't know him. Why they don't know what he looks like. Why they don't remember him at all.

Here's how I handled it. I tried to find a photo of him, but all of our photo albums are packed into a closet. I finally found one on Facebook, and showed them the photo. Then I told them about what Fr. Greg had told me, that forgiving someone is not the same as letting someone continue to hurt you. And we talked about my dad, how he is my DAD, not my "step-dad," and he is their grandfather, and that's all they really need to worry about. I hope my explanation kept the thought, "Why doesn't he want to see us?" out of their minds. I spent 41 years thinking that. That's more than enough wasted anxiety on a situation I could never change.