Eaton's last Viking says goodbye

The (cold) journey ends
London, ON
July 2023
This photo originally shared on Instagram

It was the first appliance we bought together. Not long after we got married, we found a deal on a giant chest freezer, and soon enough it found a home in our shoebox apartment.

In the ensuing 3-plus decades, we shlepped it across town into our first house, then entirely out of the province when we eventually decided to leave our homeland for good.

It sat at the back of our garage ever since, quietly and faithfully keeping everything a growing family needed in its preferred frozen state. From burgers and briskets to Passover orders and ice cream, it was always just there.

Until it wasn’t. Last week my wife went to get something and realized it wasn’t working. Nervous text messages were exchanged. Plans were drawn up. Serious conversations were had around the kitchen table about what needed to happen next.

It might seem more than a little weird to be writing about an ancient banged up appliance from an iconic Canadian store - Eaton’s, emphatically with the apostrophe - that no longer exists. But here’s the thing. Two things, actually:

1. I’m weird to begin with. I thought we had this discussion already.
2. I won’t argue the point: it IS weird. But life is filled with all sorts of strange little rituals, touchstones, and milestones that we hold onto. These memories, like the pool of brackish water that formed at the bottom as I removed the ruined food and tossed it away, form the stories of us, the narratives we toss around in our minds when we need reminders of just how wild and precious this life thing can be. Of who we are. Of how far we’ve come.

In that respect, our Viking chest freezer defined so many chapters of our married life, from its earliest moments in a freshly furnished apartment, to today as our kids take increasingly bold steps into the world and make it their own.

I’m not a “stuff” person by any means, but when a humble piece of the everyday, one that somehow connected us to a time decades ago where everything we now treasure was still a dream, goes dark, it feels right to mark the moment in some way.

The least I could do was take one last picture of our dented, filthy stalwart before it was lifted into the delivery truck and disappeared for good.

We bought a new freezer, largely because I enjoy ice cream more than I probably should. I’d like to imagine we’ll craft some memorable stories around this seemingly humble appliance, too.

#ldnont #eatons #life #family #everything