On becoming like our parents

This particular event happened a month or so ago and I have been thinking about it since. I'm sure most people want be different than their parents, especially when it comes to raising their children.

Although neither my dad nor my parents in-law read this blog -- and even if there is Internet in the afterlife (if there is one), my mom probably is unaware of this major accomplishment by her eldest -- I want to state that there is nothing wrong in the way they raised us. In fact, I am very proud to have had the parents that I do, and want my children to grow up knowing who their grandparents are. It's just that we don't want to become them.

We know our parents' flaws, because we live them daily. They are part of who we are. And that's the good and the bad of it. We want the best for our kids as our parents wanted the best for theirs. We make do with what we have, no matter which generation we belong to.

So ... after a meandering path through fluff, let's get back to the story. MLW ordered Fresh Direct and I was home to receive it. I was trying to remember how much stuff was already in the Sub Zero as I was signing for the 5 boxes that the guy dropped off inside our door. When I talk about the Sub Zero, I am referring to our one and only fridge that came with the apartment. I'm not saying it for status (maybe), but to give the reader an idea of the physical space that I was required to stuff the 5 boxes of Fresh Direct.

I was in high school when the Rubics Cube craze was at it's peak. This guy from Nor Seroond in Boston showed me a solution that was not in any of the official books. I could solve any cube in under 2 minutes. What a geek! But some of the same skills were needed to arrange the contents of the Fresh Direct delivery into our Sub Zero that was already half full of stuff.

Thinking about the Rubics Cube took me back to our house in Lexington, where like any self-respecting Armenian family, we had a spare "ice box" in the garage. In our case, it was a standup freezer full of next months meals. At some point it also housed a couple of vials of bovine DNA (I'm not kidding you) that my cousing had brought to show to US firms the purity of biotech work in Armenia. My in-laws have a 2nd fridge in their garage and I bet the ice cream that I bought 8 years ago from MashtiMalone's is still sitting in the freezer. Talk about bovine DNA!!!

As I was trying to fit the frozen pizzas in to the freezer drawer by completely rearranging the frozen vegetable section, I was soooo wishing we had a 2nd fridge/freezer. Maybe we can put it in the storage bin downstairs? There's electricity down there and we won't have to pay for it. OK, so that would mean that we'd have to get yet another storage bin to put the crap (most of it, except for my skis and comic books) we have down there in another place.

I'd always considered a 2nd "ice box" a waste or an indication of lack of discipline on my family's part. But now, I see the wisdom that needs to be passed down to the next generation. I don't recall my grandmother having 2 fridges, but my aunt and uncle did live downstairs from her, so I guess that counts.