Dearest Mom,
I went to the support group today and Mary suggested I write to you even though you won't be able to read it. She said it might make me feel closer to you and there might be things I wished I could say to you [...]
Do you remember how pretty fall was, how we looked out your bedroom window as you got sicker and watched the yellows and reds brighten the sky? You tried so hard to fight it, Mom. I hate that it was so hard for you [...]
I think I'll leave this letter for you here. In this empty kitchen. So you'll know if you come home that I love you and I miss you. Please don't worry about me.
Your daughter, Claire.
-Refrigerator note from Alice Kuipers' Life on the Refrigerator
In her book Life on the Refrigerator (2007), Alice Kuipers explored the emotional versatility of a family's refrigerator surface - a place overlaid with quotidian details and deep love. The book is nothing more than a series of notes exchanged between a single mother and her teenaged daughter. Both have succumbed to the whirl of life - mom is busy working nights at the hospital and Claire worries about school and boys. They exist in separate worlds - each one nearly unaware of the other - but the refrigerator acts as a wormhole between their alternate universes. As a place of communication and expression, the refrigerator keeps the relationship together, even if only on the surface.
In the first quarter of the book, Kuipers documented the mundanity of family routines - feed the pets, get groceries, do the laundry. Expectedly, as the routine rolls on, the notes lose their endearing sign-offs. "Love and hugs" disappears and doesn't return until a dreadful discovery derails the routine. Mom has cancer. The news causes the family to rethink its values and emotional honesty. Kuipers cleverly showed the painful realignment in two successive notes. The first note is inexpressive and impersonal, but, in the second, tenderness returns.
I've got the doctor's appointment today. Hopefully it'll be the all-clear:
Love, Mom.
-The dishwasher needs emptying.
Followed by:
We had a sad day at work today, Claire. Do you remember the preemie born in January? Maybe you don't, you probably don't, well, I'd been keeping an eye on that one, i suppose she was my little ray of hope through all this. She died this afternoon. She was so tiny.
Feeling a bit low. I'm going for a walk by the river. It wasn't good news yesterday. There seems to be some sort of complication.
Mom
Upon hearing the news, "Love and hugs" returns to the refrigerator conversation, and each family member takes a noticeable interest in the day-to-day experiences of the other. Claire and her mother both become more reflective as well - observing and retelling the simple moments of their lives. The rest of the book oscillates between meditations on the grace of life and the stark reality of being sick. After a series of exchanges about Claire's love interest Michael, this somber note appears:
I start radiation therapy today so I've gone for that. I'll be going in the mornings from now on.
Mom
In the latter half of the book, Kuipers elegantly developed the painful tension between a young daughter, who frolics in the timelessness of youth, and a dying mother whose life is bound by time. The refrigerator notes become a powerful collection of regrets, well-wishes, sincere expressions of love, and the strain to return to normalcy - something we all desire in times of pain. Towards the end, as Mom weakens, the notes take on an introspective voice closer to a personal diary. Claire continues to write refrigerator notes - even as Mom stops - in order to see and hear her own thoughts, like soft shaky whispers into a mirror. On the refrigerator, Claire articulates her emotional journey - the journey of shedding the innocence of adolescence and growing into the skin of womanhood; of learning the gravity of death; and of finding a role-model and becoming one at the same time.
Hey Mom,
You looked so brave in the hospital. I wondered what it felt like to be you, what it felt like to have that stuff going into your body. I know it felt strange for me. I mean, you're the one who's the grown-up yet I was trying to look after you [...]
Love and hugs, Claire
It is interesting to witness the departure of one life as it somehow leaves a residual imprint on the life of another. Perhaps this is the ethereal immortality that we all desire - not to be remembered or to live forever, but to be transformative.
In this story, the refrigerator was the invisible messenger who kept and conveyed the words that consummated a loving, boundless relationship between a mom and her daughter. Refrigerators are at the center of our household universes, and Alice Kuipers' earnest book, Life on the Refrigerator, confirms their significance as places of communication. In your universe, what does your shining star emit - is it poetic or prosaic?