the open door

I opened the refrigerator, looked in on my almond milk. Yes it was still almond milk. I stood there for a moment longer, during which interval a complex series of unexpressed wishes flickered across my thoughts, then, as if having completed something, I closed the door.

“I love watching people do that,” I heard S. say behind me.

I looked around the kitchen and prayed she wasn’t referring to the non-event I had just experienced, but my survey uncovered no other likely subject. Why do people just like to stand there? she asked.

It’s true. I didn’t have any real purpose. At best, a vague question prevailed over my tenure there, a question that would only become clear in being answered. In this case, what hovered just outside consciousness was an inquiry into the possibility that some kind of juice might have magically appeared that I could use as a vehicle for my powdered vitamin C. If a small bottle of juice had appeared there with my name written on masking tape, I could hold it out to her and say, This! This is why I opened the door!

But this did not happen (this time) and I had little to justify my carbon infraction.

All day people come here to stand before the open refrigerator: maybe there will be a letter announcing a fellowship, or maybe that old injury will heal if I stand here in just the right way, or maybe a partner who is available in exactly the right proportions as to be both possible and desired waits here, or at least, what? What is anyone looking for at that moment?

Only the refrigerator knows. The refrigerator, neither too intrusive nor too abandoning, is Winnicott’s good-enough [parent], a stabilizing presence, so we come here, open the door, close it, and go forth with greater confidence.

Just holding that door open, the slight tension of leaning with the door. The sense of the light button releasing when the door opens. The quality of mystery that every closed refrigerator has, except maybe those glass door ones at delis lined with elaborations of the idea of tea, juice, and soda.

But then, I mustn’t rule out these see-through commercial cases as portals of possibility too hastily. I was recently at the Valencia Whole Foods market on Valencia & 20th at one such beverage case. Someone was unloading a dolly of Prince Neville Ginger Brew and he urged me to try it. I opted for a grapefruit soda instead but as I sat at the table outside, I learned he was the Prince himself as he was loading his pickup truck. He held up a label to prove it.

I told him I was sorry and vowed that his would be the next ginger beverage I reach for. We both expressed our avid appreciation for the ginger root, celebrated its warming qualities. And perhaps it was out of this sense of fellowship that he offered me one of his small-batch brew, right off the truck. And yes, it’s excellent! Extremely gingery, with a sparky undercurrent of lime.

If you stand in front of your refrigerator and picture Prince Neville, maybe some of his ginger ale will appear on the shelf.

There must be one of those “50 ways to save the earth” statistics that applies here, though, as in if people used reusable chopsticks, 3 billion chopsticks could be saved each year. If we add up all the collective energy used in standing before an open refrigerator in one day, it would power the NY Public Library main branch for a quarter century, something like that. Think of all those books people could be reading next time you stand there!

Or maybe we just have to internalize that open refrigerator, or rather avail ourselves of that, uh, refrigerator we already have “inside” us.