Monday, February 22, 2010

Mondays With Mom: Refrigerator Doors

So my sister and I both have blogs, and my mom felt like she didn't have quite enough material to justify her own blog but still liked the idea of sharing her thoughts with the world.  So Rachel and I invited her to be a "Guest Blogger" on each of our sites once a month.  So here's her first post on Running With Scalpels!

By way of introduction, I am the proud mom of four talented and cute kids – (Laura is #2). I run in the corporate rat race in Greenville, SC during the week and spend the weekends hanging out with my hubby and boys in Owasso, OK. As a result, I have enough frequent flier miles to circle the globe and spend lots of time on planes pondering life.

I considered several topics for today –but settled on the following:

A tribute to the refrigerator door... The refrigerator door (RD) reveals the personalities and peculiarities of the inhabitants of the home. Snippets of life are memorialized on the RD. It is an ever -changing scrapbook that never completely changes. See picture below of our refrigerator. It currently displays 37 magnets, 19 pictures, 10 expired coupons, an magnetized oven mitt??, a 2006 award certificate for Daniel ( no one remembers what for), Ben’s solution to a complex math problem, the wrestling schedule (although wrestling season is over) and an essay Rachel wrote in 1997.



Random fact ….The average refrigerator/freezer is opened 58 times a day. It makes sense that we would load up this most visited location with the stuff that makes us happy – the smiling faces of family/ friends and silly memorabilia from our adventures. When we move (and we often do) – the refrigerator door treasures are loaded into a Ziploc bag and are among the first items to be unpacked and placed on their new home. Once the refrigerator door is loaded, the house starts feeling like home.

When Grandpa Grimmer was sick with cancer, we took a picture of the refrigerator door and made it into a puzzle for him. He delighted in seeing all the treasured pictures when he was unable to walk to the kitchen for a personal viewing. See below for the picture of completed puzzle.



When I visit my parents, I always spend a few minutes reviewing the RD. It is the fastest way to catch up on what is going on and I always smile remembering the times that my art work held the place of honor on the RD. See fuzzy picture below.


A refrigerator provides for the feed and caring of the body by keeping our milk unspoiled and our produce fresh but thankfully, it also provides for sustenance for our spirits – by reminding us 58 times a day of the joy in our lives. Or more succinctly said by my husband (when I asked for his thoughts for a conclusion)…..”the important stuff is on the outside".

6 comments:

  1. I love this! I had a bunch of save-the-date cards on my fridge and my brothers pointed out that all the weddings had come and gone. So I replaced them with pictures of the bride and groom instead!

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  2. Sadly, our stainless steel fridge is not magnetic. But I have about 25 pictures of Finley on the side of it that is!

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  3. I have a friend who makes a Christmas postcard every year entirely of images of the magnets, pictures, and miscellaneous items on his fridge! It's a great way to review the year.

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  4. I am impressed that Rachel's essay from freshman year of high school has survived many a move to remain on the fridge. Mine seems to track the changes of the years as the save-the-dates have given way to birth announcements.

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  5. Essay is a generous term to describe Rachel's contribution. She wrote a silly short story on a small magnetized white board for her grimmer grandparents refrigerator. We can't bring ourselves to part with it...so it moves from fridge to fridge. And it makes us smile.

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  6. This one made me smile for so many reasons! Seeing your fridge was almost like a visit. I cleaned everything off my fridge at Thanksgiving because I wanted a cleaner look and had a household full of people in my tiny galley kitchen. BUT, as time went by I missed the little reminders of family and friends and it is slowly filling back up. I loved the puzzle idea for Grandpa Grimmer. Then I smiled at the McDaniel fridge as I have that same calendar - I think you may have bought it for me?? Looking forward to your next posting! Love from the B's

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