My husband John is a scientist and a leader in his field of
environmental toxicology. He travels a lot to do research and to present the
results at scientific conferences around the world. While he’s on the road, I
hold the fort down here at home.
In the beginning, I whined about him traveling so much.
There weren’t any cell phones so he’d buy calling cards and try to navigate
through foreign operators to call home. I’d pull the phone into the bathroom
while bathing our kids so I wouldn’t miss it if he called from exotic places on the
other side of the world, like Thailand. Email made things better. For some
reason I don’t worry about him as much as long as I know that he’s gotten to
his destination safely.
He’d return home with gifts and foreign money to give the
kids, and entertaining stories about adventures on his travels: Germans who
thought he was with their group, Asians telling him what they disliked about
the other Asians, soaring in a crop duster over Rota, animals seen on
African safaris, and why America is the best in the world—our bathrooms.
He
waited until the kids were older to tell the stories about almost getting shot
in Paraguay, or being detained in England because they thought he was an Irish
terrorist. One day he’ll have to write a book!
Now that the kids are grown and it’s just me at home when
he’s gone, I treat it like a staycation. While the cat’s away, I don’t make the
bed. I stay up late and sleep in. I don’t wear makeup, other than lip gloss. I
treat myself to Hawaiian Pizza from Papa Murphy’s. (John doesn’t like
pineapple on pizza, so we never get it when he’s home).
But the undercurrent of all this carefree frivolity is that
like clockwork, when he’s gone, there’s always a crisis. It’s like our house acts
out as soon as he takes his suitcase through the door. Cars break down. Roofs
leak. The last time, our 14-year-old dog got so sick I wondered if he was going
to make it.
This time John left at the start of a major storm. While he
flew to Australia, the weekend storm got worse: lots of thunder, lightning, and
record breaking rainfall topped off by a tornado (a rarity here) only seven
miles away. When TV weather forecasters showed the storm on the map, it looked
like a swirling, nameless hurricane to me, complete with predicted gusts of 65
mph.
I battened down the hatches. As the rain pounded down through the night, I
was glad that we’d gotten a new roof this past winter, and also thankful that
we’d had someone trim widow makers off our trees this summer. Although 7,500
lost power, ours stayed on.
Monday, after the worst of the storm had passed, I woke up
and thought the house felt colder than usual. Our programmable thermostat sat
at 64, but I didn’t hear or feel the heater kicking on, even though it’s
supposed to be 68 degrees when we’re awake. I checked the gas furnace and the
pilot light was out. I’d light it when I got back home from Zumba.
Lighting the pilot light, simple right? Wrong. I took the
cover off the furnace and poked around, but couldn’t figure out where the flame
should be.
I got online and looked for instructions. It all sounded
straight forward. Wedged in again between the hot water heater and the furnace,
equipped with a flashlight, and long BIC lighter I failed again to hear the
whoosh of gas igniting.
Back at the computer, I watched YouTube videos of guys
lighting pilot lights. I turned the thermostat down to 45 degrees and went back
downstairs to the basement.
The house was getting colder. I emailed John 9 hours and a
day ahead in Australia. I also emailed Johnny asking for advice. I was
beginning to think that pilot lighting is hard wired in males only. If only I
could channel some man magic! I didn’t remember John going through all this the
few times the pilot light had gone out before.
Johnny called. Hopefully his father had passed the pilot
lighting torch onto him. He hadn’t. He said he didn’t know how John lit it.
However, he did warn me to stop waving the lighter around when I was pushing
that red button. He asked if I’d lost power during the storm, and told me to
check the circuit breakers to see if the one for the furnace had tripped. It
hadn’t. He thought I should call a furnace man.
John’s email told me that he couldn’t remember the specifics
on lighting the pilot light, but he thought the instructions were on the
furnace. The only thing I saw on the inside of the furnace panel was a detailed
diagram of circuitry.
The sun was setting. I knew it would get colder, but how
cold? I checked the weather forecast.
The lowest nighttime temperature until John got home would be 45
degrees. That’s well above freezing, and inside the house would be warmer. I
decided that I’d just tough it out and wait six days for John to get home.
We’ve got a wood stove, and I had a space heater that Sarah had brought home
from college.
One last time before bed, I tried, without any success. I
ran the space heater for a half hour, added another quilt to the bed, and
settled in for the night.
Then I laid there fretting. The later into the night it got,
the worse my “what ifs” got. I was warm, but what if the animals weren’t?
Suzie’s fur is very short and she’s prone to shivering when she gets cold. T-bone’s fur is thick
and pretty long, but he’s old and arthritic. The cats have fur coats, but
they’re not very big. Then I remembered that Pippin used to LIVE outside
fulltime. The fish and the turtle would be OK as long as we didn’t lose power
because they have heaters in their tanks. I knew I was being ridiculous, but
what if?
At 2 am I turned the lamp on and read a book for a half
hour. At 5 am I coaxed myself to stay in bed until 6:00. At 6:00 I convinced
myself to stay in bed until I could see sunlight. At 7:00 I got up. It was 61 degrees. I decided I was
calling a furnace man.
I called and he asked me if the furnace was my primary
source of heat. I said yes. He told me he had a few jobs ahead of me, but he’d fit
me in as soon as possible. In the meantime, “bundle up.”
That’s when I did the totally logical thing. I went into a
cleaning frenzy. The problem was that the furnace is located in and near my
favorite junk hiding areas—the laundry room, which is next to the garage, which
leads to the basement that used to be like a little studio for guests, or an
area for teenagers to hang out in. Now it looks like a hoarder’s paradise. It
is stuffed with the contents of two former college apartments, childhood mementos,
my long arm quilting machine, and some exercise equipment. Lots of it has been
sorted through, thrown out, or donated. Lots still remains.
I blazed a path through the garage: the paint cans, moldings, closet doors that will
complete the remodel of Sarah’s bedroom. Tools were stored away. Projects were rearranged. Then I started moving
luggage, the rug cleaner, mops, and Christmas decorations out of the storage
area where the furnace is. I was feeling good about my progress until I
realized that he’d probably have to deal with the thermostat too.
And that is how the upstairs part of our house got cleaned
up too. Suddenly decisions were made about things I’d been waffling on or
procrastinating about. Book shelves that I had left near the front door to
donate on the next charity pickup got moved to the consolidated mess in the
basement. Summer wall hanging quilts got switched out to fall quilts as did the
rest of the décor around my house.
As surely as a household crisis always happens when John is out
of town, it’s guaranteed that I’ll go cleaning crazy when someone “new” is
coming to my house, even if it’s a repairman. But, for all the absurdity, I
have to say it definitely looks much better around here, and that sweet hum of warm
air flowing from the heating vents sure does feel good! The pilot light was lit when John got home,
and I (along with the animals) slept warm and well!
Laura Keolanui
Stark watched over the furnace man’s shoulder and learned how to light the
pilot light. She never would’ve figured it out because it involved removing a
shield. He fixed it so that all the burners are firing and the pilot light
flame is steady. He didn’t even go upstairs, but he did see the basement mess,
and observed, “Boy, you’ve got a lot of stuff in here.” Laura can be reached at
stark.laura.k@gmail.com.
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