The little things
It’s supposed to rain tomorrow. Today is Tuesday and it is way not raining today. The 28th of September and it will again hit 90 or 91 degrees. Sorry to you for whom summer lasting forever would be your favorite, but I want it to get chilly at night and cool during the day, you know, fall. I want the leaves on our trees turning marvelous hues of maroon and gold and even bright yellow. Patience? Why no, I haven’t seen any lately, you? Favorite weather guy says the rain will help the leaves change color on the trees, that without some amount of moisture, they might be too dry and turn brown and fall. So if you hear of a clergy dancing in the rain in the parking lot, I’ll try and remember my galoshes and raincoat, you’ll know it’s probably me.
Keurig broke. Aaaaah, now we know why she’s whining about the temperatures and lack of leaf color and no autumn weather. Keurig broke. Descale, descale it said. The descaling happened, then nothing, just nothing. Oh, but the water that comes out of the front door of the fridge, it seemed to realize the Keurig wouldn’t process any water, so it randomly decided just to stream water even when the button is no longer being held in by a hand and a glass. Nope, no stopping that stream of water unless the fridge door is open. From what I understand propping a fridge door open, even a little bit, continuously until you want to refill your glass of water and then shutting it for the refill and then propping it back open to stop the water is frowned upon. Evidently even just propping it open a half inch doesn’t allow a fridge to do what it’s supposed to do for all the other foods. Legalistic. Doesn’t leave any wiggle room for creative solutions, just like there isn’t behind the refrigerator when you decide to fix it yourself by unplugging and replugging, known by my hi-tech friends as rebooting. The stream of water still won’t stop. How ironic is it I want to dance outside in the rain tomorrow but the never-ending stream of water out the front of my fridge made me have less than holy thoughts about it.
First world problems. The whole fridge stopped working a couple of weeks ago and the compressor had to be replaced – the lights came on but no one got cold. I announced to anyone who would listen that I wanted a plain old white Frigidaire freezer with doors that opened on one side and the ice trays you refill and put inside the part behind the top door, and the regular stuff you put in the body behind the big door. I would even be o.k. with the metal ice trays that you lifted the handle to free the ice, it was kinda fun back then. No one was particularly impressed with my hearkening back to yesteryear. In fact most had stories of their own of their ice-maker not or never working, of their pop getting slushy in the regular part but needing it that cold to keep the meat from spoiling. Then I saw the ending of the Tom Hanks’ movie, “Castaway” while I was flipping channels this weekend. I still think he could have reached Wilson if he’d given it one more try. And how at the end he looks at all the conveniences so differently because he has survived on a deserted island without anything for four years. All the leftover food from his welcoming home party, his Swiss-army pocket knife and all he could have done with it, the bic lighter that he flicks on and off and on and off remembering how hard it was for him to start that first fire, and at the end all the bottles of water he has in the front seat of his SUV as he goes to deliver the one FedEx package he never opened but saved those four years. A little far-fetched, but movies.
How subtle and easy it gets to forget to be grateful for the little and less than little things we take for granted. I’m not sure who decided water and ice should come out of the front of the fridge, it’s ingenious really, but water also comes out of a faucet just fine. Food preservation is good stewardship for sure, and how many people and places in our community don’t have the luxury of even having enough food to need to preserve? We go down that road and it starts to get overwhelming, so we take a left or a right turn and think about something else, maybe something that feels unfair to us somehow thinking if we are suffering, someone else’s suffering doesn’t have to matter to us so much. It’s kind of a knee-jerk reaction, but it actually doesn’t make anything better for anyone.
I’m probably not going to worry a whole lot about getting the water from the front of the fridge thing figured out or fixed for a bit, life can go on without it. The Keurig has been replaced, no one wants a loud preacher going willy-nilly into a world filled with unsuspecting people without coffee in the mornings. I may very well dance in the rain tomorrow, and look a little closer at the food I require, then get a couple of sacks of groceries for someone else that needs it more. And if part of what comes out of first world inconvenience is a realization I have more to give, maybe that’s a minute of grace for an old pastor longing for fall. Maybe for you too!