The juxtaposition of Wonder Woman

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           I love juxtaposition. I even love the word ‘juxtaposition’ because not only will it earn my copious points during some golden moment of Scrabble, but also because when world’s collide, I smile.
            Recently our beloved 11-year-old refrigerator took a turn for the worse without us even knowing. A tiny water leak way spewed itself all over the back of the fridge and the wooden floor below. How did I know this? Juxtaposition.
            It was a moment of housewife utopia. The laundry was drying, the carpets were vacuumed, and I had just been to the grocery store and had actually remembered my list. Walking through the kitchen to put things away, I could no longer take the curiosity about why the floor was lifting up in front of the fridge.
            What’s a girl to do? I pushed up my sleeves and moved, with probably not as much grace as I would like, the entire full refrigerator out from it’s housing and into the middle of the kitchen. Armed with a flashlight, I crawled around and made the awful discovery that that water had been spraying and my floor had been acting like a giant sponge.
            What started as a happy housewife morning turned into Wonder Woman meets Mr. Fix It.
            But that’s just the juxtaposition that I love, that the hands with the gentleness of freshly fluffed bath towels can yank out a fridge. I love being a woman. I like caring for my kids, eating small dainty portions of fancy food and sobbing uncontrollably at commercials and holiday movies. But I also value the strength that comes from doing something I set my mind to. Especially when it feels like it’s all part of a day’s work.
            In the kitchen, things didn’t get any better. A floor repairman said that they would need to send someone out to tear up the wood laminate floor and then it would have to sit for a few days before they could replace the damaged pieces, and no one could come out until next week.
            “But I’m a busy mom. And I can’t live with a fridge in the middle of my kitchen. Can’t we just tear it up ourselves to save time?” I asked. He gave me detailed instructions to give my husband.
            The minute he left, I went to the garage and grabbed a crowbar and took to the task at hand myself. Minutes later, with a grand look of satisfaction on my face, I had ripped up the damaged boards and looked at the clock. After wiping the sweat from my brow and putting away the tools, I had just enough time to bake cookies before picking up the kids.
            With the fridge in the middle of the kitchen, it wouldn’t take long to reach the butter.

Originally written 11.6.16
           
           


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