I love it when the furnace turns on that first cold day in fall. The air has been slowly getting colder, but I haven’t really noticed it until I am quite chill one morning. The sun doesn’t come up as early as it used to, either. I am feeling a bit mopey because I don’t want to leave my warm bed. But I go downstairs in the gray dawn and turn the thermostat switch from Off to Heat. I hear a whirring sound, then a steady metallic vibration. The air begins to whistle through the floor grates. The heat is coming!
This sound is my favorite all winter. I wait for it in the morning before getting out of bed. Our set back thermostat always turns the heat on at 6:00am, when I know I want to be up to start my day. I never get sick of the sound. Then one day in March or April, when the Colorado sun has heated the house so thoroughly that we can put the cat door up and the cats trot out to bask on the back patio, I turn the thermostat switch from Heat to Off. It will remain there for the day, and then I’ll turn it on again before going to bed to keep the cold early morning from cooling off the house too much. But soon, the nights begin to warm, and the switch will stay Off again. And I won’t really miss the sound of the furnace at all – I’ll be too busy listening to the open-window sounds of birds, kids shouting in play, and airplanes overhead.
But when fall returns and it is that first cold morning again, the sound fills me with joy as soon as I hear it once more.
Posted by ellen at October 15, 2003 09:27 PM