So.. you just going to keep that room open? Or are you going to seal it off?
I remember when my second sister went to college, how the house hollowed out. She abandoned the attic in August, and for a few moody months, I wandered upstairs, sat on her hot rocks hippy bedspread and admired her shellacked newspaper collages. “Cool! Dig It! Too Hot! By November, it wasn’t fun to go up there anymore, because my mother had hung plastic at the bottom of the stairs to save on heat. My mother must have been the only person who didn’t hold President Carter’s cardigans against him. He’d struck a nerve, and our thermostat hovered at 65.
Once, I pushed my way through the attic seal without ripping the staples. But I didn’t last long. My mother had turned the funky attic hangout into a meat locker. “Seal off a room” became thing #39 I swore I’d never do to my own children.
But now it’s winter in Toronto, and we have a room in the back of our skinny house that’s just about perfect for keeping beer chilled. It’s open to the rest of the house. No door, a big double-sized un-closeable window to the kitchen, and a draft that makes you think you’re on a film set and someone has just turned on the spine–tingling-chill machine. When we moved in last year, I thought the chill was a result of not having a heat source in the room. So at great expense, we piped in ducts. Silly us.
“So, um. You going to seal this off?” My friend Nicole was reaching for a blanket to wrap up her daughter in the back room. I looked at her aghast. How could I? You see this room the minute you walk into the house! You can’t just lop off a room.
Or can you? I’m guessing it would be cheaper to insulate this room and buy a nice big beer refrigerator than it is to heat the outdoors like this through a cold winter. Not to mention the drag on poor mama earth. Maybe there’s a pretty way to seal off the north-facing side of the house. A big beautiful curtain with buttons in the middle? We won’t get any sunlight for a few months. But this is Toronto. It’s not like there’s all that much sunshine to miss.
And how about my promise to my twelve year old self? Well. Truth is, the list isn’t holding up so well anyway. Item # 7 on the list was “Never ever let your kids hear you swear.” I believe I crossed that off giving birth.
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