My fridge

I have a theory and it goes a little something like this:

Look at someone's fridge and you can tell what's important to them and once you know what's important to a person, who can tell who they are.

 I'm thinking of this because where I blog is in the kitchen.  The computer used to be in the livingroom, but the baby was listening to the siren call of wires sticking out of the wall and we had to move it.  Now it resides on an antique table my husband bought me two years ago for my birthday.  It shares the table with a box of cornflakes and the light fixture from the bathroom which I can't figure out how to replace.  Also an Eragon mouse pad and a milk pitcher full of pens.  To the left are my pantry shelves and to the right, my fridge. 

And on my fridge there is a picture, black and white, a copy of a copy, held up with a magnet we bought at a souveneir shop on our honeymoon because everything else was too expensive.  It's a picture of my mother at my age and she's lying down on her back, fast asleep, her arms wrapped protectively around a baby asleep on her chest, a handknitted afghan over them both.  The baby is me, and I'm about Samuel's age by the look of it.  My mother looks tired.  Her hair isn't neat and she's wearing a blouse and an old cardigan.  It's obvious that she is on her bed, but the blankets and sheets, so perfectly selected and neat every time I visit them these days, are in a tangled heap.  I remember that afghan from my childhood;  it sat on the sofa, folded neatly at the end and there are other pictures in albums that I've seen where the afghan is draped over a sick child, usually me, or a sleeping father.  Later, there are pictures of my sister curled up with the afghan, and it's possible to trace our family history of cats based on which one is asleep in the photos.

My mother and I look almost nothing alike, that's an honour reserved for my sister, who is the spitting image of her.  I look like my father and his family; the long bloodline of Scottish clans coming out in my face and body where my mother shows her more willowy and ethereal Celtic roots.  She and my sister, with their childhood pictures of palest blonde hair and creamy skin, could pass as relatives any day.  She and I, not so much.  But in this picture, I look just like her.  Her thin, frail-looking body is nothing like mine, but the expression on her face and the way she holds her baby...I could be looking in the mirror.

You can't tell, or maybe you can, that she's not wealthy.  That blouse is a print from the seventies and I was born in '81.  Her hair hasn't been cut in a while.  The afghan is handmade.  And maybe most telling, she's asleep, in the daytime, with a ten-month old.  She tired because she's a new mother and she doesn't have help.  When the dishes need to be done, she does them.  She feeds her family.  She rises early.  If you could look beyond the picture and see outside the bedroom you'd discover that she's on a farm.  The farmhouse only has one bedroom and a large closet where my crib sits.  Her days start when my father, who works in the city, leaves at dawn to drive for almost an hour.

I keep the picture on my fridge to remind me that my mother was where I am today.  That the hard days I have and the tight times I live through are not exclusive to me, and that where my parents are today is so much better in so many ways than where they were then, and that maybe my future holds those same successes.  I like this feeling of intimacy I share with her when I look at that photo, and I realize how much she understands where I'm coming from when I call to complain that my washer broke, again, and I have to hang my laundry in the cold.  Or that we're having beans for supper, again.  She knows what I'm talking about.  She's looked at an empty fridge and made supper anyway.  She's done her laundry by hand.  She's fallen asleep in the middle of the day with her baby on her chest, probably after a long night of crying and nursing, waking up to watch as her husband leaves for work.  She knows she can't ask him to stay home, they can't afford that, but the nine hours alone ahead of her stretch and she panics a bit.  She hugs him twice as hard.

I hope I'm not alone in this, and that when my mother hangs up the phone after speaking with me she feels a kinship, too.  I think she does.  I feel sorry for those women going through difficult circumstances who don't have that anchor to hold on to, knowing that your mother did it before you, and your daughter might after you makes it easier, somehow, to get up from your bed, and do what you have to do.