In recent years, I've noticed that I do not readily jump up in October, run upstairs and pull the air conditioners out of the windows, and take them down the stairs into the basement to store them away for the winter. I had realized this last November when I took those burdensome boxes out of the bedroom windows and carried them down. This made me think that I was in pretty good shape, especially since our bedroom air conditioner was about 30 years old and was huge, heavy, and unruly. My body managed to get the AC down to the basement by myself (a drawback in life of having only daughters), but my mind kept telling me with each precarious step down the stairs “you're getting older, you've got nothing left to prove, you don't need this, so just stop using this ancient old heavy air conditioner and replace it with a new, lighter one.”
This annual rite of passage with the air conditioner is a way I've watched myself age over the past ten years. There were years where the thought of carrying air conditioners down two flights of stairs to the basement was almost too much to bear. Sometimes, my mind would tell me I would probably fall down on one of those flights of stairs going down to the basement. Other times, I would remember a woman named Pearl who used to attend our church. She had told me about a man who became paralyzed from a fall when he was trying to move an air conditioner. Not a pleasant thought.
For some reason, the thought of falling tragically is not so strong in summer when it's burning hot and the women look to me to do something. A man wants to save the day in summer, but no one appreciates putting the air conditioners away for winter, a thankless act of manhood that will lower the utility bill but otherwise no one else will care.
Taking the air conditioner to the basement to me is a serious matter of statistical probability, trying to determine whether or not I can determine how many more years I can continue this annual rite of passage before my inevitable decline would become too great of a risk to take. This air conditioner thing is certainly a cliff you want to walk up to the edge of but not fall over.
We've only lived in one place with central air during the past nearly 30 years, and this was in our first home in Leonia from 1997-2002. Those would have been prime years for me to transport the air conditioners to the basement because I was only in my thirties. But there was no need then, so five years of my prime was wasted, and in an unfortunate twist of fate we found ourselves leaving central air for window air in a one-hundred year old home just as I was approaching 40, the age when men should cease performing feats of strength with window air conditioners.
I haven't mentioned that we have three air conditioners, one for each bedroom. We bought two from an Estonian couple who attended our church. In 2002, they were returning to their country and needed to get rid of two fairly new window ACs. It happened that we had just moved to our new home without central air. These new ACs were not like the 30-year old cast iron AC that was left in our bedroom window. I could carry these new lightweights down to the basement without screaming at people to move, abruptly call on someone to drop everything and open the door, or move the toy in the floor out of the way, or whatever. Moving that big AC was War and Peace and Apocalypse Now all rolled into one for me.
This year, I finally broke down and got a new 5000 BTU AC from Target that seemed really light compared to the old AC. I put it in the window in May and left the heavyweight in the basement. June, July,and August went by before I finally got up enough nerve to carry the heavyweight to the curb for a trash day in September. I thought about this impending challenge all summer and finally, a wave of courage came over me as summer was slipping away and fall was imminent. I hoisted the “ancient of days” and attacked the staircase, going up the stairs to exit the basement. Marcia opened the front door as Old Ironsides and I had an epic struggle all the way to the curb, where I dropped her to the ground and thrust my arms into the air victoriously. Now approaching 50, I needed to know I still had it. And at least for one more year, I can say that I do.