Survival Varnish

It’s that time of the year when we start wearing hats in the house. And one of us starts wringing her hands in an effort, I think, to keep the blood circulating.

Somehow, we have become philosophically opposed to turning on the heat before November 1st. I say 1st, but it’s really more like the 15th or Thanksgiving or Christmas Eve. It’s something of a sport, seeing who cracks first. It’s always me.

Our kids grew up in layers of wool and flannel. My older daughter had a hamster that would go into some kind of hibernation and have to be revived on a heating pad because it was so cold in her room. Still, it seems healthy and cheerful to me to live in a lot of layers and have good strong blasts of cold air clearing out the must of our 110-year-old house.

The thrift of not turning on the heat ‘too soon’ appeals to me. It’s part of that ‘making do’ upbringing from my Depression-era parents. They kept rutabagas and apples in the fruit cellar in their basements growing up and it gave them a survival varnish that I always admired. They wouldn’t ever have to but I bet they could have killed a rabbit and roasted it if they had to. It was the possibility that was endearing to me, not that they’d ever do such a thing.

So, about the heat. We had heat when I was growing up. Often, it was too hot in my parents’ thin ranch house, over-roasting they were doing, compensating maybe for their childhood days with just spits of heat from a wood stove, and so I’d throw open the window in my room at night and watch the winter wind flutter the curtains. I’d huddle down with a pile of blankets and watch the moon rise.

I still do that. It feels lovely and thrifty like I have bushels of apples and rutabaga in the basement, there just in case. Like I have a survival varnish myself.