You know that old saying, "When it rains it pours"? Have you ever wondered why it seems to only apply to mildly to excessively stressful situations and not to happy and exciting things?
You just never hear anyone saying, "Boy oh boy, I just got a new job that pays 10 times my old salary. And guess what? Yesterday I got a phone call that said all my student loans were forgiven. I know right? And then today...TODAY...I won a brand new car."
Listen for it all you want, but generally these are not the sort of events you'll hear strung along under the tag line, "When It Rains It Pours". Though don't I wish they were.
We recently had a deluge of mechanical failures at our house. In the span of 3 short days, our van (our dear family truckster) broke; our microwave caught on fire and expired on us; and our dishwasher decided (mid wash) it could no longer go on. 3 days: 3 separate events.
It started to feel as though our house had caught some appliance/machine disabling disease and everything was at risk. It also felt like we would be better served standing with our wallets open so all the money could fall out.
When it rains, it pours.
But there are bright sides in even the nastiest of storms, aren't there? Moments to be had. Memories to be made. Lessons to be learned. If only you look closely enough. Right? If only you can see each raindrop for what it can be, rather than what it seems like it is.
As we debated the cost and wisdom of getting our van fixed versus replacing it with a New To You sort of vehicle, I realized how much that old red thing meant to me after all; how many memories I have tied to it. It's the vehicle I drove while pregnant. It's the one that rushed me to the hospital in preterm labor. And it brought my babies home safely for that first time. Though it may be categorized as "Just A Car", that great Red Barron in the garage spans the Before & After in our "Family" memories: from picking up cribs, lugging home baby shower gifts, and hauling one tired pregnant lady from one doctor appointment to another; all the way to that first drive home with them---with all those nervous glances in the baby mirror, and that first family vacation, and onwards to today. I didn't appreciate how much that all meant to me, silly though it may seem, until we had to look at perhaps moving on. I can't tell you how happy I was to be able to get it fixed in the hopes of driving it around until it just falls apart.
And the glimmer of happiness in the failure of my kitchen appliances is two fold. Firstly, (and I mean...really, now), who doesn't want new appliances? Shiny and new with scores of buttons with unknown purposes, just waiting to be discovered. (And if you happen to decide to begin the switch over from black to stainless steel, that's all the better, right?) Another lesson gained from my 4 days minus a microwave and 7 days without the dishwasher is that Dan is no danger of my up and deciding to go Pioneer Gal on him. Nope; he can cross that right off his list of worries. Turns out, I'm a modern girl with an extreme love for modern conveniences. (Secretly, I've always suspected this to be the case, but at least now I have the data to back it up).
For the moment we're settled with the new shiny things in the kitchen and the well-running thing out in the garage. The calm between the rainstorms, you might say. And not that I'm asking for it to happen or anything, but if my refrigerator keeps acting up, I think the lesson there might be that a stainless steel fridge with water & ice through the door is the right thing for a happy kitchen. (I'm just saying).
No comments:
Post a Comment