A walk-in closet was tucked away in a basement corner of my childhood home. My parents called it the “cold storage.” It was always cool in there, even during sweltering, summer days in the suburbs of Chicago.
The Cold Storage was lined with shelves, most of them packed with canned goods – baked beans, peas, tuna fish, cranberry sauce. Boxes of dried milk and oatmeal and canisters of flour and sugar lined the lower shelves. The coolness of that space was soothing, a brief respite from a late-August heatwave, and the stocked shelves comforting, blunting our nuclear anxiety over the Cold War with the Soviet Union.
Mom and Dad kept close tabs on those shelves, monitoring the inventory, checking use-by dates, replacing spent supplies. I grew up watching this routine, in the 1960s and 70s, occasionally afraid of falling bombs but reassured by the vigilance of my parents, our shared hope safely stashed away in the Cold Storage.
The Berlin wall fell in 1989 and the Soviets became Russians again in 1991. As a young adult, I looked back with chagrin on all that ambient anxiety in my childhood, not to mention the absurd confidence we placed in a basement supply bunker. I also learned that my parents hadn’t been saying “cold” all those years, but “coal.” That little closet had at one time stored coal for the furnace when the house was first built.
I chuckled, a bit ruefully, at the irony: we stored supplies for a war we would not survive in a room built for a fuel that burned us into a climate disaster few of us will survive if we don’t live differently, right now.
And right now I sit in my comfortable California home wondering how far away North Korea is and whether any of its missiles can reach the Pacific shoreline sitting just a few miles from my house.
Nuclear weapons and global warming tap a familiar anxiety and dusty memories. I recall that “cold storage” in the basement with a nostalgic comfort. No matter what might happen, I often thought as a child, at least we have those supplies, and Mom and Dad will make sure we have plenty of them, all of them up to date.
Where does my hope reside today?
More than one answer occurs to me, but I prefer just to say “church.” It sounds so old fashioned, past its shelf life, but I breathe more deeply on my way to worship, walk less hurriedly climbing the church steps, smile at familiar faces and receive hugs from longtime companions, some of them newer. We all gather in our collective Cold Storage, this one warming us in the light of day. We dip into some old, well-worn supplies, often delighted by how fresh they taste, grateful for a bit of comfort food.
We sing together, pray, listen carefully to ancient texts, gather around a shared table and open up the canned goods.
So ludicrous, really, to tend so carefully to these patterns and that building and those people. There must be better things to do with my time and energy.
I never thought like that as a child, as I watched my parents unlatch the door of a strange room and survey their stock of hope. The Cold Storage feels warm to me today, stocked with love and compassion and resilience — fresh bread from Heaven and the life of God.
I stand in it, week by week, certain that it wouldn’t protect any of us from a nuclear war or the effects of climate change; but I couldn’t live without it.
Thanks Jay for your thoughts…comfort in the familiar for sure or certainly in the nostalgic past. I often think of my Irish Catholic roots in my small mid-western town and know that those people cared for each other. I recall especially when my dad passed unexpectedly back in 1978 at 54 years of age after having businesses in that community for 30 years and raising 8 children there. The local Catholic church, large by small down standards, was packed to overflowing out the front doors and down the steps. It was a testament to not only who he was, but to who that small town was as a community and more to your point as a community of believers. I have no illusions that everyone in that church that day were Catholics, but instead representatives of every other little church in town including our own. Then as a town of 1,033 and now as a town of just over 400 at last census, it is a community where people care for one another, rooted in faith and in the shared values that reflect who we were and are. I am blessed to have been from there and to be able to go back each year touching again the heart of that community and knowing I will always be a part of it.
A heart warming read
thank you…so glad I took the time
God bless you journey brother