A death in the family
My microwave first came in to my family 30 years ago, a Christmas gift from my long-deceased Father-in-love to a young married couple. He bought three of them at Montgomery Wards, a department store chain that hasn’t existed in years: one for us, one for my husband’s brother, and one for himself. It has been a part of our family for a long time, and yesterday it stopped cooking, started making a funny noise and let out some smoke and the smell of burning plastic.
It is a huge old beast, the relic of a bye-gone era. It was big enough that it had an internal shelf, and I could cook two pans of stuffed peppers in it at once. It had a temperature probe that I haven’t used in years, and I could fit a 9x13 pyrex in it comfortably.
It maybe didn’t have as much power as a modern oven, as a bag of popcorn took 4 minutes to pop, not the 1.5 - 2 on the label, but it faithfully did everything I asked it to. And a few things we didn’t ask, like the great sweet potato explosion of 16 years ago, when my girlfriend was temporarily living with us during the renovation of her place. My husband broke the middle size of a set of pyrex casseroles in it, trying to cook rice, early in our marriage. I still have the lid. I also have a picture from when the kids were growing up, of an Easter basket hidden inside it complete with the temperature probe stuck into a stuffed animal. It’s been part of the history of our family.
The lightbulb hasn’t worked in a couple of years. I was always going to get around to replacing that, and now I won’t. We broke the glass tray at least 5 years ago, and carefully searched the internet to find a replacement of the right size for our old, long-obsolete model. It survived the move back to the house that the same man who originally gifted it willed to us after his death. I had to really look to find a baker’s rack to set it on, one that was deep enough and had enough room between the shelves.
This microwave has been used for everything from reheating homemade turkey soup to making a soothing cup of midnight hot chocolate on a sleepless night to cooking sugar-free baked apples for dessert when my dad visited. It’s warmed baby formula, been used as a timer for homework and time-outs, and stored kitchen stuff overflow during parties. It’s held many items on its oversized top: for a while, the only television we owned sat there. Stacks of cookbooks, cat treats, dried flowers. Right now, it displays a statue we found in the eaves of our house while doing our recent re-roof job.
RIP, Microwave, wherever we can find to recycle you. Now I’ve got to figure out how to replace it. There is a big footprint to fill.
In other news, I'm already really tired of being cold, and it's only October 10. Not looking forward to the next 4 months.