This is the part of spring that
I like the best—when it’s warm enough to have the doors of the house open, but
there aren’t very many bugs flying around yet to get inside and annoy
me.
I’m guilty of throwing open all
my doors and windows during a mild January-thaw day, too, just to get fresh air
into the house. I always have my bedroom window cracked open a
bit, even on the coldest of nights. I sleep better for it, and yes, I could very
well be a fresh air junkie. I hate that stuffy feeling that you always get in
winter. My mother was one to do this, to throw the doors wide a couple of times
during the winter months, and if we were chilly for a day, she’d just tell us to
put on some extra clothes.
She asserted that
scientifically speaking, fresh air with more oxygen heated faster than stale air
and she was right about that.
Of course, in those days it did
take a bit longer to replenish the heat, because we didn’t have a furnace with a
nice fan to circulate the warmth. We had two oil space heaters in our eight
room, one and a half story house. For those who don’t know, oil space heaters
were stoves, made of metal and in our case, black. The one in the kitchen was
about 3 foot tall, the other, in our living room, more than four. They had stove
pipes that came out the back, and were vented by chimneys. When the stoves went
out it was usually due to too much carbon in the inside, and required a repair
man to come and clean them out to get them lit and working again.
You had to spread newspapers
all around the working area thanks to the high volume of soot and grime
involved. Once it was clean, he’d turn on the flow of oil and light it with a
match and a small piece of paper, inserted into the fire pot.
The good thing about a space
heater was that you could put something on top of it to dry, or heat, as long as
you kept an eye on it so it didn’t scorch. The mainstay on our kitchen space
heater was a pan of water, to combat the dryness in the air the heat
wrought.
The one bad thing about oil
space heaters? Twice a year you had to pull down all the glassware on the top
two shelves of the kitchen cupboards (those fancy dishes that weren’t often
used) and give them a good washing. They’d be covered with a grimy, oily
film.
It never even occurred to me
until I was married and moved away and no longer used them that the presence of
that film meant we were breathing in crud. There are often more down sides to
things than we care to think about. Another negative aspect to those space
heaters was that sometimes in very high winds, there’d be a gust down the
chimney. It gave us some very stinky air reminiscent of car exhaust and often
put out the flame, too.
Mom would light it again—yes,
with a match and a small bit of paper—and it never occurred to us how dangerous
doing that could be.
But spring and warmer air meant
you turned off the stoves, and didn’t turn them on again until mid-to late
October.
My mother’s house had several
flower beds, and by the end of May that air coming into the house was scented
with lilacs, lilies of the valley, and narcissus. That particular combination is
an aroma I’ve missed over the years.
But the new lilac trees that we
planted last year have buds on them, and those lilies of the valley my son gave
me last June are also poking little sprouts up. I look out over the flowerbeds
every couple of days and measure the progress of the growth.
As I do, I spend a few minutes
in joyful anticipation of inhaling that sweet fragrance once again, and
soon.
Love,
Morgan
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