Michael D. Davis.

Let me start by saying that I can take the cold much better than I can take the heat. As my Ma is known for saying, ‘You can always put more clothing on, but you can only take so much off.’

Okay, so, traditionally my Ma turns on the furnace on November the first. This happens regardless of weather. There has been snow on the ground and Trick or Treaters out and about and Ma refused to push the button. This year was different.

It started in late October, right when the weather just started to turn and everybody stopped talking about how October “used to be” cold. And it started with my Father, the Old One. He started wearing a winter coat like it was mid-January, and he put in the new filter for the furnace. He then pridefully stated multiple times, while talking about the coming winter, that last year he did not use his heater once.

This is just ridiculous. First of all, the man does not have any two-dollar plastic heater, but a big robust radiator heater. And two of them at that. The thought of them going unused was annoying to me. And his defense was ridiculous. He stated that, what I have to call his bunker, had received enough heat from my sister’s room through their single bordering wall.

Then the Old One stated multiple times that he cleaned off the furnace grate in his bunker, and that someone just has to clean off the one in the kitchen then the furnace can be turned on. He often said this to my Ma, who I believe he thinks is the person responsible for, and the sole gatekeeper in charge of, the kitchen furnace grate. Well, that got under Ma’s skin, as it would anyone.

Me and Ma talked about these transgressions made by the Old One that ticked us off and came to an agreement. It was declared that no matter the temperature or weather, the furnace was staying off until he turned on his heater. I know it sounds petty, stupid, frivolous even, but I tell you, in my household, this is just how it’s done.

November first comes and goes, the furnace stays off and the tradition dies. Somedays the temperature is fine, reasonable, other days it’s downright frigid. The Old One attacks the only way he knows how, through nagging and mild annoyance.

So, he repeated again about the kitchen furnace grate and brought up the temperature on a nearly daily basis. I got out more blankets. A cardigan. A heated blanket.

Also, this weird hooded blanket thing that my Ma got me for Christmas one year. Somedays I was under so much cloth I looked like a pile of laundry, but I wasn’t giving up without a fight.

My sister played Switzerland in all of this. She had perfectly tailored her room just for an event like this because even in the middle of August, she remains cold. She walled herself off to the rest of the household and with multiple heaters, somehow made her room a different time of the year. I visited her, at the other end of the house, only once during this month-long war, and when I opened the door I was met with a wave of humid heat. It was like I opened the door to a Tennesse Williams play. It made me rethink the Old One’s defense about heat coming through the walls.

This war was not acknowledged publicly between the dueling sides. I’d be sitting under a heating blanket watching the number on the house’s thermometer click ever downwards, and say I’m all good, to the Old One, who would just happen to ask. He could be seen with a blanket thrown over his head and shoulders in his bunker and say nothing as well.

Then this weekend hit. Thanksgiving weekend and the house’s temperature dipped down to, at its lowest, 52 degrees. I see this, and it doesn’t phase me, I’m willing to never turn on the furnace again. Then my sister smells something burning. She goes around the house wrinkling her nose like she’s in Bewitched, and she comes to the old man’s bunker. His heater was turned on. It was the last night of November. Me and Ma came out chilly, but victorious. December 1, without a word, without a gloat, the furnace is turned on.

I shouldn’t call this a war because it is just a battle, living in this odd old house with these people I call family is more than likely the war. I won this battle, but there’s always tomorrow.