Funny how life is, you know? The other day I became very upset with life and with my refrigerator of all things. We have had that old refrigerator for two years. For two long years I’ve had repressed anger about that refrigerator. One of the drawers in the door is missing the front panel so we put in an old piece of metal that we found in a closet to substitute for the front panel as a method by which to keep the food in place. The front is pitted with rust spots which my husband gallantly tried to cover with appliance paint. But, it is no use: The refrigerator is old and worn and it shows it in looks and sound. Last night the motor began to churn more loudly than usual, which irritated my already fugue state of mind, so I became even more upset with it than usual.

My husband tried to counteract my domestic terror anti-refrigerator campaign by pulling the refrigerator out and cleaning underneath and behind the unit, cleaning the coils, doing what he could to appease my attack about the refrigerator.  It was of no use because the noise from it continued. We were both exasperated and he finally said, “I’ll buy you a new refrigerator tomorrow if that is what you really want.”  “No, I do not want a new refrigerator right now,” I replied. In the back of my head a little voice yelled, “Liar! You would love a new refrigerator!”

As my husband put the refrigerator back together again he called me over to say, “See this? It was tucked into a panel in the back of the refrigerator.” It was a little yellowed newspaper clipping, a prayer note:

As We Face The Year Ahead

By Avery Brooke

Lord, we always make
New Year’s resolutions.
But seldom keep them.
So what do we do, Lord,
As we face the year ahead
And dream our dreams
Of being better people
Living in a better world?
And the world comes back to me:
“You try, child. And if you fail,
you try again.” (This was underlined in pencil)

There is the old story of a man
Asking a monk: “What do you
Do up there in the monastery?”
”We fall down and we get up.
We fall down and we get up.”
Lord, when we fall down in the
New year, help us to get up
And try again.”

How did that prayer note get there?  Did ever so many years ago someone hide that little prayer note in the refrigerator because they knew that someday someone might find it? Or did it fall into the panel by accident?  It was of no matter, because the act of finding the note was the point of the entire experience, it seems.  I actually felt kindly toward that old refrigerator for the first time in two years of living with it and my annoyance and anger with the refrigerator dissolved.

Inexplicably, tonight, the refrigerator simply stopped vibrating and making that low grumble that was so annoying. 

Perhaps, I thought, the only reason for the noise was to somehow convey a message to inspect it so that I might find that little prayer note?

I think so.