Our fridge has been making clear signs that the end is near. We figured out that, if we didn’t move quickly, we would have to repent. So today, we purchased a new one. This evening, we began the process of getting ready. The first thing: take everything off the fridge.
It was a wonderful and odd trip into the past. The fridge is the center of the kitchen, and as such, holds such critical items as school directories, the grocery list, invitations and event flyers, of most importance to my son and wife, sports schedules.
However, there was a great deal more!
No pictures of our children have been added to the fridge in a long time. Although he hasn’t picked up a violin in years, there is a snapshot of our son at a music competition playing in a science room next to a safety hood and a big red box that reads, “FIRE BLANKET”. Above it, in a Sunday School made Hanukkah frame, he is a smiling next to an electric menorah. A magnet version of his head is there, too. It was on his locker in elementary school! A wallet size picture of our daughter from first grade was in a dusty and furry Elmo frame. The same pigtailed photo was also in a frame made of popsicle sticks. Her baby picture was in a school themed frame holding an old newsletter clipping titled “July Checklist”.
There are a dozen different colored magnets from the Society for Humanistic Judaism. Rectangular magnets from pizza places, restaurants, schools, camps, businesses, and of course, the library and the fire department dotted the fridge. A teddy bear magnet had names of doctors we haven’t seen in years. There are five wedding “save the date” magnets, including one for a wedding that never happened. A paw printed magnet says, “Got poop?” There are magnets for the Friends of the Arts and the Deerfield Parent Network. Two small red magnets say “CAUTION” and “risk”. Two magnets say, “PREPAREDNESS STARTS WITH YOU”!
A large magnet has a picture of two beavers and reads “Hugs and Kisses from Arizona!” There is a red phone booth, a black cab, a turtle, a baguette in a bag, a bottle of white wine, a pig in a tutu and a drawing of a weight lifter. There is a pineapple and three magnets from a hotel in Hawaii. A photo of a friend in a fur coat has a talk bubble above her head that reads, “What do you mean I’m dramatic?”
A big magnet proclaims, “New Trier Alumni” (my alma matter) and another has the eagle symbol of the University of Iowa (although none of us attended that college nor does it seem any of us will). There are nine square magnets all of which say, “TAPE SIDE” There is a magnet the shape of a van, another the shape of a stop sign, a magnet version of the movie poster from What Dreams May Come, and a tiny box of Minute Rice.
Next to a mirror, and inside a red plastic container from a locker is an Obama 2012 button. A white plastic note holder with the Deerfield Warrior head was a homecoming giveaway. A frame with our daughter’s name on it was the place card for a family bat mitzvah.
Some words to remember were on the fridge, too. The lyrics from “This is the Day” from one of the children’s mitzvah service, a clipped section from a High Holiday long ago, and at least a dozen fortunes from fortune cookies sticking out from a red star. The National Holocaust museum sent us a magnet with the famous quotation from Martin Niemoller.
It took nineteen years to accumulate all this stuff on the fridge. It took about fifteen minutes to take it all off. Some of it will find its way back on the new fridge, but it will not be the same. It will begin a new era. We will have new schools, universities and grad schools. We will have pictures of children in their late teens and early twenties. There will be new words and mementos of more recent travels.
Some things can keep, some keep for a long time, but everything has a shelf life. Time to start again.
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