More than just a fridge

It is the first thing you see when you enter the room. Past the bathroom door and adjoining sink, it sits on the end of a dresser lined up against the wall like a squat square grape — my mother’s new purple refrigerator. 

Shared like a dorm room for a couple of senior co-eds, mom has decorated “a space” into “her home” at the assisted living center where she has lived for four years. There is a modest bed and dresser. There are the random clothes and magazines on a chair that remind me of my daughter’s closet system. There are lots of tabletop pictures next to her college diploma, a few notes near the phone. She has the only door that is covered in colorful greeting cards taped firmly to the surface; her cellophane tape budget could sustain a small country. And she wakes each morning and rests each night with her electronic requirements:  phone, television and transistor radio. But when the basic mini-fridge recently broke, no longer keeping the yogurt and pudding cups cold, that’s when it was time for drastic action: a violet statement of coolness — her new refrigerator.

Two retailers promised on the phone that the standard white model I wanted was sitting on the shelf, but when I got to the store, it wasn’t. A determined search on the Internet led me to order and ship a fridge to the local outlet for pick-up, but then someone asked which color I preferred.

“White, black, purple or orange?“ I asked my 16-year-old before finalizing the contents of my electronic cart.

“Purple,” he said matter-of-factly. “Grandma likes purple.”

It took a little longer than mom had planned, and she clearly felt the absence and loss of the machine — an aspect of her household disrupted. She asked for daily updates on its shipping status, and I tried to remind her (and me), good things take time. I couldn’t figure out what was troubling her so much, why she could barely wait for its arrival, and then I realized.

Without it, her house couldn’t get back to normal.

Every item in her room has its role and the extra luxury of a tabletop fridge has given a small space purpose. It gives my mother something to care about, to control, to store with food that are uniquely hers. It is the touch and taste of home she carries with her wherever she goes.

Lauren Lev is an East Meadow resident and a direct marketing/advertising executive working on Long Island. She teaches advertising and marketing communications courses at the Fashion Institute of Technology/SUNY and LIU Post. Her story on a Jewish education program impacting our local community appears in “Thin Threads: Real Stories of Hadassah Life Changing Moments” published July 2012.