Warm feelings for an old refrigerator

I have an unfamiliar refrigerator in my familiar kitchen. It’s sleek, shiny and smudge-proof.

So why am I missing my old one, a clunky, black, last-century model, its drawers and shelves held together with duct tape and Super Glue?

The ice maker hadn’t worked in years. The vegetable drawer had been terminally stuck until I bought a new one online last month. And the water hose had broken so many times over the years that I spent hundreds of dollars on repairs before I learned to fix it myself.

But when I came home last week to spoiled milk, warm beer and leftovers that reeked, and my tinkering couldn’t get cold air to flow, I knew it was time to let go.

I hauled in ice chests from the garage, unloaded what food could be salvaged and dumped the rest into the trash. It would be four days until the new refrigerator came; plenty of time for me to come to grips with the idea of moving on.

Yet I panicked when my daughter called me at work to announce the new refrigerator’s arrival. The delivery guys had agreed to haul the old fridge away; I wanted to back out.

Maybe we should keep it, become one of those families with a refrigerator in the garage. But it doesn’t work, my daughter reminded me.

“Keep the drawers!” I shouted before she hung up. “Just don’t let them take the drawers.”

I came home to a stack of cracked and broken drawers and sheepishly hauled them out to a cluttered garage.

What possessed me to hold on to them? Did I consider them souvenirs? Insurance, in case a new drawer breaks?

Or do I have some weird bond with my refrigerator? And is there a support group for that?

::

I grew up in a family where nothing was ever thrown out. My dad could fix anything with wire and duct tape. So I blame him for my difficulty trading up and tossing out.

Still I was caught off-guard by my conflicted feelings.

Who misses a refrigerator, especially one that hisses and cackles all night long, doesn’t dispense ice or water anymore, freezes the lettuce and lets the ice cream melt?

I Googled “missing my old appliance” and found a few kindred spirits in a forum on the Chowhound website.

“Is it odd to mourn the death of a cherished appliance?” wondered a woman grieving the loss of her immersion blender. “I’ve been a wee bit sad… not crying-sad. Anyone else have this reaction?”

There were only a dozen responses and most were mourning cooking gear: The hand mixer with blades angled just right to produce the perfect pie crust, now displaced by a food processor. The waffle iron packed away in the garage because it shorted out and set the kitchen on fire.

No one waxed sentimental about a refrigerator. But I know we’re out there.

My friend Kimberly visited to check out my new appliance, and confessed that she still mourns her old washing machine, the one with the balky agitator and mystery leak that flooded the floor with every load.

“Can’t we just keep putting towels on the floor?” she pleaded when her husband insisted last fall that it was time to replace it. Now she has a high-efficiency front loader, with dials she doesn’t understand, sounds she doesn’t recognize and a door she can’t open mid-cycle to add an errant sock.

She misses the familiar back-and-forth swish of clothes being washed. It was the soundtrack of a busy family as her children grew up.

I’ll miss my refrigerator for reasons just as sentimental: It was the family bulletin board, a diary recording our lives, reminding us who we are in magnet-mounted posts.

::

The old refrigerator gave out, in part, because there was so much food crammed in the freezer that the vents dispersing cold air could no longer do their job. Sometimes that’s how my life feels now, overloaded with so much stuff, I struggle to get the basics accomplished.

Cleaning out the old and reconfiguring the new would be a chance to remedy that.

So I said my goodbye by plucking off mementos that reflected the tableau of family life.

I realized how messy and jumbled the fridge’s door must have looked to strangers — covered with schedules, lists, greeting cards, poems and years of family photos. A magnet held a thick clutch of recipes I hadn’t cooked in years. The side was plastered with menus from restaurants that no longer exist.

I tucked most of that away in a box and used the rest to tastefully decorate our new uncluttered appliance.

It wasn’t easy to decide what stayed. It’s even harder to explain what my choices mean:

Some family photos, a Bob Marley magnet, an Obama bumper sticker, excerpts from Victor Hugo and Maya Angelou, a sympathy card that reminds me that the sun will always rise and a Yom Kippur card encouraging me to strive to eliminate my imperfections.

And in the center, just above the spout that now delivers ice, is a passage from Ralph Waldo Emerson about the wisdom of moving on.

sandy.banks@latimes.com