"Set wide the window. Let me drink the day."
-- Edith Wharton,
Artemis to Actaeon and Other Verses
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| Toy window 8-14-14 |
"How does light enter a house? If the windows are open.
How does light enter a human? If the door of love is open."
-- Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes
Every summer a war rages in my house.
The guys like it cool.
I like it hot.
As soon as the furnace is turned off in spring, they turn the AC on.
On any given summer day, it's not unusual to hear one of them complaining, shirtless, about how "stinkin' hot it is in here," while I'm shivering in a sweater and jeans under a fuzzy blanket.
If it was up to me, I'd have the windows and doors open all summer long, except maybe during the most heinous heat waves.
But the guys like to batten down the hatches, lock everything up and seal us in tight day after day after day after day -- like lizards in a terrarium.
Maybe it's my claustrophobia, but I can't stand being shut in like that. It's stifling. I can't breathe.
I like to let the outside in so I can feel the breeze, smell the air, hear the rain and the birds and the children and the lawn mowers.
Don't tell the guys, but sometimes, when I'm home alone, I leave the AC on and open the windows anyway. (In the winter, I do the reverse -- open the windows and jack up the heat. I do the same thing in my car.)
But then there are days -- days when the natural atmosphere outside matches the climate-controlled atmosphere inside -- when the temperature settles in at a perfect 70-something and a lazy breeze chases away the dampness and humidity -- when I can throw up the sashes and let the air out there mingle with the air in here.
We're in a stretch of days like that, and I have the place wide open.
These are the days when there's no need to battle and we can call a truce in the window war.
Plus, I'm home alone and there's nobody here to tell me that I can't.
