The Parable of the Minifridge

I spent the hol­i­days in Targu Ocna, Romania, a town of 10,000 nes­tled in the Carpathian Mountains beside the Trotus River. Traversing the 5,000 miles to get to that place takes a day, which is a snap for a human. As a crow flies, it would take a month and 150,000 human calo­ries a day. That’s a lot of bird­seed, but I am told crows pre­fer grapes.

An inci­dent that occurred dur­ing my stay is an apt metaphor to con­sid­er as we stare down this new year. I had a par­tic­u­lar­ly har­row­ing start to my jour­ney. I had to meet a 3:45 AM bus in Portugal to get to the air­port for a flight across Europe to Bucharest. I knew the doors to my town’s bus/train sta­tion would be locked that ear­ly in the morn­ing. The bus would be parked wait­ing on the street behind the sta­tion. The only way to get to that street was to walk around the sta­tion, which added more time huff­ing with my 20-pound backpack.

Facing the locked sta­tion, I knew how to walk left and get to the bus. But I rea­soned that turn­ing right, a route I had nev­er tak­en, would dump me clos­er to the wait­ing bus. In that instant, with the clock tick­ing and my brow sweat­ing, I made the wrong choice. I turned right. I walked for anoth­er five min­utes before I real­ized that the rail­road viaduct blocked my access to the bus. In a pan­ic, I began to climb the train tracks but was held back by voic­es inside my head; “that’s real­ly dan­ger­ous, what are you think­ing?”  I had no choice but to sprint back the way I came, around to the left, under the rail bride and up a long hill to the bus. I made the steps on to the bus at 3:44, pant­i­ng thank­ful­ly under the cres­cent moon hov­er­ing in the black Portuguese sky. I had just start­ed my day. I was already exhaust­ed, most­ly by my impetu­ous, exper­i­men­tal right turn at a time when more com­mon sense was required.

As a some­times-sen­tient being, the les­son of that wrong right-turn stuck with me dur­ing my whole stay in the lap of the Carpathians. I planned to leave my Targu Ocna guest house the morn­ing after New Year’s Day to dri­ve back to Bucharest. The night before, when I reached down to unplug the minifridge that had chilled my pineap­ple juice and cheese baguettes, the out­let sparked and blew out the pow­er to my room. There in the dark, I remem­bered my pan­ic at the locked sta­tion the week before. I took a deep breath and shut out the voic­es inside my head. I had a pow­er bank for my phone; I had no bus or plane to catch. I owned my time. I had a com­fort­able bed and an east-fac­ing win­dow that would announce the day. I would tell the house­keep­er about my plight in the morn­ing. I went to bed and slept hard until dawn.

When the next morning’s sun washed through my room’s cur­tains, I was well-rest­ed and relaxed. I called Nina, the house­keep­er, and explained in my spot­ty-Google-Translate-Romanian what hap­pened. She showed up imme­di­ate­ly and took me to the break­er box near the ceil­ing right out­side my room and switched the pow­er back on. She shook her head and smiled. We shared the inter­na­tion­al lan­guage of laughter.

Reflecting on the Parable of the Minifridge, I enter 2025 with a deep breath, hap­py to wait for dawn in dark­ness, ignor­ing voic­es of dis­qui­et in my head.