Last summer, one of my long term grown-up dreams came true. We installed a whole house fan.
For years, I had the fan on my wishlist, but it was expensive. So summer after summer, we used window AC units and fans. They cooled part of the house, but never the whole thing.
Our upstairs wiring could only tolerate one AC unit, which left the master bedroom an icebox, but the other bedrooms too hot. The hot air would move around as the fans blew, but it wouldn’t leave. There were nights when you could stick your arm out the window and feel the cool air, but it refused to come in the house, probably because of science.
At night it was musical beds and floors trying to get everyone to a spot cool enough for sleep. (Strangely, my kids have been unimpressed with the technique I used to keep cool on hot summer nights as a child – sleeping with a cold, wet washcloth draped over me).
In the air conditioned master bedroom, I would wake up freezing and congested in the middle of an August night. I freeze all winter, because I’m a frugal lady who keeps the thermostat on the lowest temperature I can tolerate. But freezing in the summer didn’t feel right.
The Chaplain is working more. I am walking, sewing, and reading less and parenting more. Quiet time has become an elusive ghost of a former life when I got to be alone for a period of time each day.
It feels like we are all in a constant negotiation for what we need, the kids and The Chaplain and I, and none of us are quite getting what we’re looking for.
So it was as we rearranged our dining room around a new piece of furniture, and my grandmother’s teacups came to the kids’ attention. They asked if we could have a tea party.
One night last week, we broke a mold.
In our house, usually I make dinner, we eat cereal, or the Chaplain orders takeout. There aren’t many variations on this theme, except when the kids step up and make something.
If I do a little dinner prep early in the day, it can give me the push I need to finish the job later so that there aren’t too many “breakfast for dinner” nights in one week (other Mom Didn’t Cook favorites include quesadillas and grilled cheese sandwiches).
On this day, I started some beans to re-hydrate on the stove late in the morning and put two pumpkins in the oven to roast.
I left the beans boiling away and forgot about them.
I was standing in our dining room with one of my older daughters. We were having a conversation when we heard a loud noise. The door of our china cabinet, inches away from our elbows, flew open. A cascade of china fell to the floor at our feet.
While we were standing very close to it, neither of us had been touching the cabinet. My having seen what happened with my own eyes took away the anxiety I usually experience when I find something broken. I knew no one was at fault, so I was able to skip the Who Is To Blame step of dealing with brokenness.
If I hadn’t been in the room the moment the accident happened, I would have spent serious bandwidth trying to figure out how an accident like that could have happened without human interaction. Yet it clearly had.
There’s something almost universally appealing to readers about having a comfy chair near a window with a cozy blanket, in a quiet room with a good book.
If you can picture yourself there, I want to suggest a title for the book you’re holding in your hands. So much the better if it’s a rapidly darkening November afternoon, with the window open and a cool, damp breeze flowing in.
