The Evolution of The Fridge When I first bought my fridge, which, sidebar, I am made irrationally angry at the fact that there is a d in the word fridge and not refrigerator. I’m sure some linguist has provided an etymological history as to why that is but I’m not going to look that up. I’m just going to stay mad about it. I digress. When I first bought my refridgerator I insisted I needed this “drink door” feature. If you grasp the door at a certain point you can press this lever button thing and only the face of the door will open so you can get to the milk or juice or jar of garlic without opening the whole door and letting more of that precious cold air escape. Energy saving and efficient. Double win. I had to have it. It was my make or break. I didn’t need the touch screen or funny shaped ice. I didn’t need zone temperature control in the produce drawers. It didn’t much matter what color it was or if it sang a pretty song when my children inevitably left the doors gaping open. Just the super special secret door. I needed it. We’ve had this fridge for four years now and the only time I use that super special secret door now is when I accidentally hit the lever button thing and the wrong part of the door opens. Mostly, that door that I had to have is now just a reason Mom said ‘Fuck’ in the kitchen. But for me, the most important role of that door is not how it opens or what it shelters behind it, but what’s on it. It fascinates me how parents track their children’s growth and development. And how many personally created rulers we make for ourselves. Some people carve marks into generations old door posts. Others collect t-shirts to threaten to turn into quilts. Some people actually make those quilts. Christmas ornaments bought in homage to the year prior, lengths of ribbon demarcating their height, scraps of wrapping paper from every birthday, even hoards of human teeth sacrificed to the tooth fairy. We create our own rulers to celebrate our kids surviving their childhood and us managing to do the same. I use my fridge. My refrigerator has been a fascinating memorial monolith to how my children grow and change. I’ve seen the progression twice now. Once with my eldest and now on almost replay with my twins, children I lovingly refer to as the littles, each eleven years her junior. This second time around it began with rainbow shapes. Swaths of colored vinyl on thin sheets of magnet painted the bottom third of my fridge door in orange circles and green triangles. My children, newly admitted into the kitchen (and only because they defeated the baby gate so why fight it at this point?), braced their unsteady little bodies against the stainless steel and slid the blue rectangles and purples squares around the smooth metal while I cooked. I’d look over my shoulder and call out a color or a shape or a pattern on the magnets. My kids would ignore me entirely and keep at the shoving shapes game. At least they weren’t underfoot and within eye line. Eventually their little hands mastered the claw grasp and they began ripping those rainbow shapes off the door and throwing them across the kitchen, delighted with their new life skill. Getting them to pick them up was a non-starter. So cooking dinner ended not with eating but most often with nearly slipping and dying via a magnetic triangle sliding under the ball of my foot. Geometry is a killer no matter how old you are. Time passed and the magnet shapes skittered under the fridge, seeking escape and respite from my children’s abuses. My children grew and shifted how they played and how they thought. So one summer day I brought home a big package of new magnets. Boldly patterned letters. All the As and Bs and Cs were added to the last hanger-onners of the once robust collection of shapes, now dwindled to some slightly gnawed on circles, a lone triangle, and a purple rectangle that had definitely been folded at least thrice in its life given the large, wrinkly crease and the fact that it wouldn’t lie flat anymore. This time those magnets reached a little higher than the lower third. Because my children’s hands reached a little higher now.